Silver Ribbons (a poem)

Silver Ribbons
— A poem by Bacil Donovan Warren


The initial enticement, words that seem to mirror action; at first, intoxicating. Embracing.
The dulcet tone of her voice, the mere presence of her: warm and inviting
As the bright rose and orange of sunset on thin clouds, stretching forever away
As love should.

Time moves, and the warmth becomes a raging inferno.
Desire to possessing; caring to giving to single-minded focus—
A need to provide, to comfort, to support as best he could.
The surrender of self to a picture bigger than one;
A picture so big only two can possibly fill it.

As the picture forms, the colors shift; not anymore are they the dreamscape of sunset.
Instead, they become first the penumbra of shadow:
Snaking out, like the silver ribbons at the end of twilight
Icy tendrils with frozen spearpoints, wrapped around his beating heart,
Squeezing it still. Stabbing it empty.

Even yet, it tries to sob tears of anguish—regret—appeals to sanity, to fate
Her ears deafened to the cry of the mutilated,
It screams its silent chorus of together, a song lost
In the now-frozen, darkest black of solitude.