i.
Six nights, flicker out;
seven candles consumed.
Black wick sorrows
smother a charcoal soul.
The taste of Rahab’s sin,
baptized in voodoo tears.
ii.
Dripping fingers begin to fall,
creeping down;
walls of wax crumble,
cold and motionless.
Wishing away the kiss
of Jericho’s folly.
iii.
Bloated worms devour their fill,
leave an empty corpse.
A vacant cocoon,
laced with tenuous silk;
a wandering whisper
lost on the wind.
iv.
Shrouded by a thin veil;
a broken smile
swings
from a sliver of sinew.
Hope on a twisted noose;
pale Japanese maples,
stripped of scarlet leaves.
v.
The sun wields a rusted shank
slicing open the amethyst sky.
It shines through me,
around me.
Disguised,
languid light
casting not a shadow,
nor lost in brazen clouds.
I linger in these days,
where the shadows and light
are one.