In Days of Dust and Doom

Bring me the rock of agesThat I may smite mine enemyAnd bury him deep beside sleeping lava,Careful not to stir, further,The quaking earth

Upon his grave, I shall lay the rock that smote himA headstone, baptized with blood

And while his bones smoke with hatredI shall weep for my lost children

And when tears dry in dust and smoke,I make puzzle pieces out of rubble and broken fingers

Then, as if reading to my enemy below,I count the hands and elbows and feetAnd faces and tousled crowns of schoolchildrenAnd grandmothers, of bakers, and nursesOf a doctor’s chest, opened as if by decreeWith a stethoscope buried in his heart

And my enemy sinks deeper into core and magma,Wishing, for the first time in his life, to be read toBy his mother, the mother of assassins

I shall tell him of a time I would have read to him.I shall remind him of a time I could have fed him.I shall revisit a time that I might have loved him,But he has killed me a thousand times already,And the times that would have, could have, and might have beenNever ever have happened.