Work Text:
He walks in darkness, but his hands are warm
like water in the night. His steps are quiet ripples on stone.
He has seen death: in generality and specificity,
in numbers and names, chains of lost consequence,
pronouncements of clean eternal ink.
He has tasted the old ash of histories unaccounted
in the breath of a forsaken world’s air.
He has known death intimately, personally,
looked upon the embers of time
with eyes like embers. He has dreamt of death,
touched nightmares with his hands, and turned away,
lifting his small nose to cold clouded day.
He has looked on death, and now he turns from it,
ceasing to defy it.
(It walks by his heels, docile, not quite friendly.)
Time is his old dear enemy, long held at bay,
and now he has taken a breath and plunged in.
(He lets it embrace him, like a clear lake.)
He has defied the histories, but he breathes them,
looking upon the world to discover it,
to read its existence as a fantastical tale.
(Every day, he discovers that the world is real,
And shivers at his touch in the morning.)
He has looked upon the ruin of the world. He has saved the world
with his small hands. He is a thing of terror
and none have loved more fierce,
more warm than he. He is another sun
that crawls into bed beside you, hiding his face,
waiting to be comforted. His eyes are embers,
but they are closed now, and he breathes gently
in your arms. He is a small warm thing
to be held in open palms, an ember burning softly.
When he wakes beside you in the morning, he will smile.
He has given you the world, and now you take his hand
and lead him into it.