Saturday, Dedicated to the God of Cycles of Violence and Revenge who Devours His Children, but Also of Harvest and the Lost Golden Age
#43 of poetry
This is based on a hypothetical possible aftermath of Arches and assuming that story, at some point, involves the laying to rest of all the Ghosts of Echo, in which Chase and Leo, each now much older, each still alone, but now each freed of their respective burdens both psychological and metaphysical, meet again, somewhere, doesn't matter where, and decide there's no reason not to try again.
Which, you might have been able to conclude from the actual text, but there's no harm in being clear.
Also about the subversion of the idea of recurrence from 'being doomed to repeat history' to 'getting the chance to relive the parts of history that are worth repeating.'
[Marked Adult for being inspired by materials whose creators have repeatedly and unequivocally said are not for anyone under 18.]
I return, once again. I'll run again.
It doesn't matter. Where is there to go?
Guilty I am, and guilty I have been.
Though in that town of secrets, who's to know?
But no road leads me out from your shadow,
My wolf, my lonely wolf, my more than friend
When your arms were around me, long ago.
I move in circles, back where I begin.
Our roads have forked beyond imagining.
Our routes have long diverged. And it is well.
Our love, though love indeed, was tragedy,
Our happy ever after lived in hell.
Yet still when distant desert wind I smell
It conjures up your face to me again.
And I remember. Or perhaps foretell.
I move in circles, back where I begin.
I've long since cut the anchor you could not.
I've long since fled the ruins where you haunt.
And roads to other loves I found, I thought.
They proved dead ends. They proved not what I want.
I walk my only path, as nonchalant
As I can be. My fur is growing thin.
My image in the mirror grows red and gaunt.
I move in circles, back where I begin.
But now the wind is changing. Now the dark
Is not so filled with spiders, nor so black.
I find cool shadows overhead: the arc
Of some stone arch, sweet shelter in the crack.
I dream at night of men, at an old shack,
Waiting in welcome, for a long lost friend
Who now may join them, now may have them back.
He moves in circles, back where he begins.
For every day, hysterias die down.
For every day, another ghost has passed.
Echoes fall silent, even in this town.
The smoke begins to clear, at weary last.
And voices in my head are fading fast,
For even ghost towns crumble, in the end.
If ghosts may rest in peace, we too can ask
To move in circles, back where we begin.
Mi Principe, we are on separate routes.
If mine is proving cyclical, why then
With yours I'll intersect, I have no doubt.
We move in circles, back where we begin.