The time is very short. A few more years of watching and praying, a few more tossings on the sea of this world, a few more deaths and changes, a few more winters and summers, and all will be over. We shall have fought our last battle, and shall need to fight no more.

-J.C. Ryle, Holiness

Of Humans, Hearts and Lesser Things

Freeform poetry

Occurs near the end of "Enter the Shadow Realm"

Standard disclaimers apply

Irony has the upper hand.

I've always called you cold, calloused, unfeeling

Uncaring, unloving.

Unbelieving.

Never giving in, and never giving up on your own self motivated desires.

This disease, this sickness that ate away your heart of flesh,

Replaced beating, living tissue for stone.

And I've feared, oh how I've been afraid

that you'd infect the only thing you've held dear to you.

Your only lifeline, the only joy out of your sadistic family and lifestyle.

And here you kneel, hands outstretched

Reaching for the embrace that you'll never receive

As he reaches back, never touching

suspended in time.

Only statues. Only stone.

And your eyes bore into his soul, bore into my own,

Your unseeing orbs that have seen all too much in this lifetime.

I hate to think of the last.

And I wonder, if your statues had to form

why not in that brotherly embrace?

Why must evil squander every last vestige of joy?

So here you kneel, a lifeless caricature of the lifeless life you lived

and before you, the foreshadowing of what would be to come

the crushing of your own brother's spirit.

And the fear of it all causes me to grasp my humanity a little tighter

Hold my breaths a little longer

Breathe out and in slower

As I wait for our hero to save us.

Your load would have been so much lighter

Would have made you even stronger

If you'd let us shoulder

this burden hanging over us.

You see, you didn't have to go into life alone.

But then again, you've always been too prideful to realize

that your most hated enemy is the one who loves you the most,

who'll move mountains for you

climb the highest peaks for you

Fight your fights.

Finish them.

Hold you should you ever choose to cry.

But then again, if given the chance, would you?

And I'm trying so hard to be mad at you.

I want to hate you for everything you have ever been.

But I can't.

This little voice inside me, one that sounds strangely like my closest friend,

says that I'm better than that.

That you're better than that.

That hate corrodes the soul and blocks the light from wondering eyes.

I look up at the battle, suspended in air

A lost cause, you'd sneer, but I have faith.

I have friends.

I have hope.

I have love.

I have everything that you never could

and everything to gain of it.

Maybe I have things you never thought you could possess.

Maybe that's why your soul collapsed on itself

Maybe that's what caused your stony disfigurement.

But there's one thing I know:

That the rain cuts into the thickest of stones,

and likewise, tears will erase every last crevice of hate from your countenance

And maybe, just maybe then

You'll become someone that I could call

friend.