Sodom in Spring

By M. Wister

He erupted like splintered crystals,
like leaping angel meets sinning world:
a dragonfly emmarbled in morning dew,
frozen in a web weighed by morning dew.
Faith never left him, as his chances waned
with the night’s onset. When his wings
were exhaustion-stilled, hope did not leave him.
He died loved but he did not die knowing.

By the morning, dew meshed sun to silk-white,
spun for a brazen youth who needed no warnings.
“It’s as if the world had numbed to our words”
Said she. Clouds swallowed the skies without breathing
–the augur remained truthful, though by now
none were counting. Her heart beat alone
while men thrashed past her ghosts, without pause
for the webbed dew, round like rainfall frozen.

We’d parked near a well pissed-on hydrant,
near a brick wall plastered painted gray–
Half-aware nuisances were defacing
all that’s bare and young like dogs pissing.
Goosebumps beneath the underpass, scarred
with the marks of mal-adaption, left by
caned youth fighting against their ripping mouths,
torn upwards by the hooks of the hungering.

We trawled over the frozen lake to fish,
His hammer thundered an ichthus hole:
Crack. Shatter.
Mists swelling with spray
as he splintered the ice to fractals.
He freed the lake ten thousand ways,
and the water gasped for air.
I knew there that we, too,
would one day die and be consumed.

The ice shattered but held our weight.
She said it felt like peering down
from the glass bridge to Heaven,
while it crumbled above our raptured bodies.
“If it hasn’t broken yet, will it ever break,”
Our feet atop the crystal web,
catching, flaying, and filleting
the little children of the lake.

He erupted skyward, swimming
like boy ripped from her hands,
like leaping angel to sinning world,
blue hands thrashing-faith-hopeful.
Ten minutes now to the hospital.
She cried out when the lake rumbled,
Crack.
Shatter when she stared
at the soft-laid boy in the web.
Tears stained his face like rain on morning dew
and his wings were still.

M. Wister writes out of necessity and desperation.
Their digital trail is eerie3.neocities.org