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Writer's pictureJenny Penland

Event Horizon ‣ My Achilles, you'll always be.


Is this what you need to see

The empty soul I’ve come to be

A heart collapsed to singularity

Just a black hole, ever widening

Long surpassed escape velocity

Dark stars and scars and vacancy

My steady hands detract from bloodied knees

To let thy cursory glance deceive

The chink in my armored link

Like a lurking iceberg just down-reach

That hairlines the verge of my resiliency

But what lies beneath scrapes so deep

For the lower-key, a malignancy

The worse its outcome is bound to be

And though fools turn port vacuously

I brace at starboard, bartering

Vying to salve and remedy

Via hastened, vain modalities

Sleepwalking through this fever dream

As you force the very hand that feeds

So baby, please; if not for me

Then for the You you’ll one day be

In earnest, inch backward to see

The forest for its many trees

I’ll wait patiently under fallen leaves

Should you oblige this distant plea

Left buried, turned, and withering

From pain exchanged as currency

You speaketh not without the fee

And though poignant your prosody

The trade rate compounds onto me

Whether in infancy or at fifteen

For my Achilles, you’ll always be

So dare to believe this entreaty

And more apt, you might concede

That I gave of myself, willingly

And would again, if just to esteem

A glimpse of who I raised you to be

I’d hold her hand through anything

Be the vessel for which your venom bleeds

The blanket reason for deficiency

And I would grit my teeth and turn my cheek

Through hallowed eyes and weathered feet

As target practice for your animosity

If the light from where our tunnel heeds

Was not snuffed from sight’s periphery

So if you’ll please allow to rouse and breathe

This small flicker from our mainstay creed

Then I’ll fan the flames of verity

In lockstep, wherever your path may lead


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