A/N: Sincerest apologies to Elizabeth Bishop.
In the end, there was no definite path to disaster.
It began as something everyday:
a glance that lingered a shade too long
from a stranger;
a seductive eye,
a smoldering serpent's smile.
It lay somewhere in the secret naggings
of unexpressed doubt,
resentments built like piled stones over
the brow,
his pleading, trembling hands.
If there were losses,
(his trust, dreamless nights, his gasping breaths)
they were negligible, unlikely to be missed—
nothing would ever come of them.
He would never say, later,
where the destruction began.
Perhaps it had always been,
flowering in his breast, a vine
that waited,
and slowly gave,
and was—
that which ate and ripened and grew
leaving only
holes
behind.
