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.