The Witches Pyre

The Witches Pyre

The baseless sentencing

Lit her from beneath

She felt it rise up

Singeing through the scales and scars

Every extremity numb

All the words

The violence they throw

Bitter speak from the mere tip of their tongues

Is the toxic brew she swallows

And the combustible cocktail that ignites

Any remnant not alight with fire    

Vile fiend with a lost conscious

And a determined spark

Why utter that one word?

That dangerous indefinable concept

Results of too many complicated fears

He’s the bastard son

The unnamed, bodiless, homeless shadow

Who makes his rounds in twenty-four hours

He’s no stranger to her corners

Forget her name

Cease tracing her shape

That paints the world in long, dark silhouettes

Torture, no more that child of May

The singular hellcat spawned from spontaneous passion

Flames rise and fall

Burning new wrinkles

Strange hues in her flesh

Scarring her bruised insides

Beautifully illustrating her anemic outside

Magnificently damaged

She reduces her boil to a simmer

As the chilly breeze off her heart

Cools her to the core

But their haunting words

And that foolish concept creeps

Rearing its ugly face once again

Chanting to the wind

Witch

A cyclic ignorance that blinds all reason

Succumbing to the fiery pit

She conjures new life

Amongst shards and embers of past flare ups

Casting her spell

Under the owl’s watchful eye

E.A. O’Connell