Suddenly she started
silently smashing every
window, stomping with
bare feet on the shards—
reduced to powder in a mess of blood.
Her eyes closed.
The gold candelabra was the last of the metal to
melt in the forge, the glorious blade
painted black, to be painted
red: she raised the sword.
The mirrors shattered:
every mirror in the world,
broken by the black blade, no
one could see themselves, so she
opened her eyes.
She razed villages;
the forest fell before a legion of wicked words
and the demented cruelties of her mind;
when she passed the river of Narcissus,
her armies drained it before a reflection formed.
The land rotted
while she feasted by herself,
drinking from a wooden goblet,
consuming the eyes she tore from
the sockets of skulls.
They couldn’t see—
no one could after they’d seen her;
but as she marched again,
a child snuck past her men,
looking up to their general.
A tear fell
from the child’s eye,
eyes so large that the whole Earth
could be seen, just in those eyes—
she could see herself.
It stared back.
It was hideous, covered in
rags, rage in the blood on the dark sword of
wraiths, making shadows in light and disturbing
reflections to hide. It was exposed in an infant’s eyes.
She hated it.
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