Summary: Master Legolas reflects on that dreadful, cursed bane of his life in pure, romantic, freeverse poetry. In complete seriousness (never mind the subject matter).

Disclaimer: Poetry inspired – wait, reiterate – INSPIRED by Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

My Shroud Apparent Fair

I am shrouded in the deepest of shadows
The darkest of lights
I wear my smile as a brilliant ode to the morning,
And I dance in a sweet nocturne to the night.
Eyes I meet faithfully, lovingly,
Parting embraces I clasp to my heart as none before.
My mask is goodly, gentle, kind;
And my shroud apparent fair.

My arrows pierce the heart; my aim is always true –
For is not love but a war? And yet for whom?

Love is a war.
I make war on love. These nights of darkness loose my soul into the black maelstrom of fury –
Such an alien, such an underrepresented facet of my kin!
And so, tender kisses…
If the thorn on the rose I gift her pricks and draws her blood
Should a tear slide crystalline shimmering down her cheek…
She is safer, then, than in my arms.

Such is not a thought that haunts me easily;
My mind grows pale and ill, a rippling scar
Stretched nigh across the very breadth of it.
Darkness, do not embrace me
But if light
Should have the power to erase her
In all might

Let it be done.