Darkness: A Sestina.

Like an elegy, your promises pour out of the darkness,
I lay beside you—breathing—yet it is me you lament,
in your terse syllables, you seem to distil moonlight,
fashioning it into a weapon of soft, reflective glass,
yet when you say the words, I am the one to break.
Bend over, slave, let me use you until you cry again.

And when the harsh, unforgiving sunlight comes again,
with my vitrified pillow you smother me to darkness,
to my crepuscular self, this dawn of silence is a break,
from the distance where I hear the anodyne diurnal lament,
of everyman not trapped in your torture chamber of glass.
Stop breathing, slave, let me take you to the moonlight.

In the starry afternoon, I swim in memories of moonlight,
as you walk through the barriers of my fragile defence again,
and with your fist shatter the heartbeat in my jaw like glass,
on my skin, the evidence of your love, grows like darkness,
and in my chimeric pleas, you crush my hopeful lament.
Be quiet, slave, every inch of you is mine to break.

As twilight approaches, in cracks, my sanity starts to break,
my little lunar dreams, start to feel like threats of moonlight,
the crickets sound outside, their chirping yet another lament,
I stand in place, and spin like a lost creature, again and again,
attempting to hold inside my chest, your promise of darkness.
Hold your heart out to me, slave, turn your tears to glass.

The evanescent comfort of night engulfs me like a hug of glass,
as the whip against my back threatens my skin to rip and break,
I stare out of the window at the stillness and obsidian darkness,
it is laden with my pain, the luminescence of the moonlight,
but to my whimpering soul you demand silence again and again.
Hush now, slave, don’t turn my lullaby into a pitiful lament.

But in the darkest hour of the night, I know our love is a lament,
as you snore beside me so gently, I sip ice out of my little glass,
with my hand against your chest I feel your heart beat for me again,
I hold onto your cold skin in panic, as if letting go will cause day to break,
and my soft, azure kisses against your skin turn to borrowed moonlight.
Go to bed now, slave, tomorrow we’ll still be here together, in darkness.

And when the cruelty of dawn breaks again upon us in lament,
you use your hand to create darkness before my eyes of glass,
and in blinding sunlight I refuse to break, as I wait, for our moonlight.