A/N: Poems into Stories Competition, Sonnet 81: Or I shall live your epitaph to make, William Shakespeare
A Larger Poetry Collection
177. The Head Comes Off
One of them always had to survive:
the victor, the one who'd choose
the world, and its path
And there was no room for forgiveness
despite understanding – for they could never understand
when a gallows hung over them both, ready to swing
and strike, and take one of their heads off
tumbling in dry torn grass
that the other could blow upon
and burn, or refertilise and grow
But neither of them to step away
from that gallows, because the fight
had already come down so far: still the other breathed
and he could not rest, and so they both had to stand
and struggle, until one of their heads came off.