For Camp Potter! Week One: Arts & Crafts
Prompts: legend, guardian, vessel.
Word Count: 195
Perhaps today will be his burning day
and I, his guardian, shall lament
and my tears will prove useless.
Perhaps today he will grasp his destiny with one good hand
and sigh in relief
giving up his mortal body
giving up a weight he has forgotten that he carries.
I watch his fragile vessel.
It withers into nothingness,
death creeping slowly through his veins-
a thief in the night.
He cannot conquer it and he cannot hide.
He knows now that he was never meant to.
It will be slow.
He will burn out like a star,
a spent flame, lingering and blue
and he will crumble into ashes
but he will not rise again;
he is not the stuff of legend
in spite of everything,
all his careful planning,
all his wishes and his best laid plans,
his naïve quest for immortality
destroyed.
The memory of it hidden away
in a basin full of shame.
Perhaps today will be his burning day.
He will illuminate the sky
and set fire to everything you thought you knew
and I will let my song float down
on the back of a breeze so gentle,
so fleeting.
