nimue

sometimes i suspect that just after the dark of night-

i am most suspicious in the dark

it is when i am most awake, and most afraid

because i cannot see you

and you cannot see my fragility

the thing i sometimes think holds you to me

more than anything

and so you, being so clever and young, wait

till the beginnings of light lull me into the half-sleep

that i wake angrily out of because it is the mark of the old-

i suspect that is when you do it

take each of my careful brushes with their slender spokes

and spin them gaily in your slim hands

dipping voraciously with all the hunger in your swelling soul

into my thousands shades of oil

smudging your mouth with charcoal 

 coating your hair in the soft pastels

and laughing, laughing like the hungry wild thing you are

at the thought that all of this could ever be denied you

that anyone could cut you off from the heat of your desire

with your starving need you wait and wait and then

in a blast of shaking speed vanish and reappear

beside my chair proper and pale when i awake

wheezing with the angry indignity of age that robbed my hands

of their steady pace and my eyes of  their open strength

you are quiet but i can hear the tantalized joy thrumming

beating through the hollow in your throat

and i know one day soon those small hours will not be enough

that your hunger will take you by your willowy throat

and you'll do the unthinkable

I'll die easily,

i know what it is to be dragged by destiny

and to be starved for your right place in this world

I suspect what you do in the hours after dark

but i do not stop you 

even with your slender hands descending

and the silent pillow encroaching upon what is left

of my feeble spirit and flickering genius

i'll smother under the weight of this fate

i love you. and i knew it would come to this.