Melissa Davilio

2021-05-14 05:29 pm

The creaking of the pines
elicits icy shivers,
like steel fingers
raked upon a naked spine,
pine needles quivering
like jagged splinters
jabbed into desperate
thirsty veins

Slivers of pain,
slices of sorrow,
glimpsed through the gaping cracks
between the bark,
as stark winds whisper
then wail
weaving twisted tales
of ennui and despair

Oh, the horrors they have seen
while the sun giggles and gleams
from her corner of the forest
peering from her perch
amid the heavens,
her cackles seep into the earth
to settle
among the dirt and the decay

As the emerald canopy
leads the lost souls astray
through the labyrinth
of decomposing leaves,
corpses cast off from the trees,
disrobing before the fastidious eyes
of their maker,
undertakers laying out their palls
for the weak and broken to bear

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