Perched at the foot of the bed, tired Light and morose Shadow stood silent.

Light still wore her patched negligee, carrying to and fro the still effluvia,
of many a night’s conundrums and mumbled ‘what ifs’,
spoken softly against the chimes of a demented clock,
racing like a Mad Hatter to catch front-row seats to the Rapture.

Pale-golden Shadow rose like an intoxicated Phoebus –
spear high, and ready to bargain with the Snake…
slithering in the mud, decrepit, telling time and time again its penny-worth tale:
‘An apple a day, keeps Dog away.’

Quiet reverie, quiet hands, a long-forgotten dream of lust,
of blood-stained sheets, and the ringed smoke of one last cigarette.

Of heart throbbing next to one another, exchanging vows, and promises, and a low-note humming of ‘Strangers in the Night.’
Shadow softly speaks – ‘Is this it? The End of the Line? The final stroke of the brush?’

‘Leave,’ Light had whispered in a tongue unheard.
‘Forget the bridal bed, the binding of hands, of moans as soft as the brushing of a seraph’s wing.’
‘Though I revel in the dark, and dream of things absconded,
Your seed is hollow. Your soul impotent’
‘I speak of shadow, yet I await the Dawn – with rosy fingers and crimson tongue. My body shudders and rustles, like leaves blown away by autumn’s wind.’

Shadow’s fled, the dawn approaches. Light is still, nothing more to fill.
Depart, depart, depart….
impotent, worthless, oblivious, mute….my lover comes racing. Sketched Stallion. I hunger….