The Laments of the Queen of (broken) Hearts

This is one work that will be featured in the upcoming poetry chapbook Crossing A River Darkly.

It is original content written by myself.

"Oh for what time soaked pestilence pounds against my skin." The Queen of (broken) Hearts said,

Batting her eyes in the most demure of fashions, running a hand of boundless light across the Breast of Death.

"For what trials mortals face, and steal their hearts ‘way.

A trial, less so, a game, more so.

Even you, darling Death, cannot deny Father Time,

and he ticks against me, a disease in my own perfection’s."

And thus Death replied, his voice a wanton, waxing whistle.

"The immortal are not timeless, Queen, My love.

We never have been. We have only been denied the rights to die, and in the beginning, we were glad of it."

He turned with a face taunt and cold with ages of the souls and the soul-less,

Those damned by iniquities howled behind eyes of sickle-eyes.

The Queen of (Broken) Hearts whispered replies:

"Bah! To the pits of Bodom with them all! I grow old now, a wrinkle upon my skin,

a sigh of pale across my full lips.

What will they do when their Queen of (broken) Hearts is gone,

When cups spill over and the air is thick with plagues of locusts,

When the spaces between dimensions, the core of my being, are filled with the screams of pain and the blood of dragons?

What then Death?

And yet, you smugly tell me that even we are bound by Father Time. I refuse to be bound!"

Her breath came in great gasps, and the earth trembled as hurricanes marred the coasts and blizzards tore across the mountains, so great was the Queen’s anger.

And again Death answered, because he feared nothing, not even the Queen’s anger.

"Then there will be another Queen, perhaps they will call her Discontent,

Or even Discordia.

How could I know these things?

I know only death,

only mothers crying for their babies and innocent ones diseased by the very world around them,

children crying over parents.

Souls not meant for either heaven or hell,

those who believe nothing, plague my thoughts.

Except when I am with you, my Queen, my solace.

All is quiet now, and yet I cannot think to answer your question of what can be."

The Queen of (broken) Hearts pondered his heartache for a moment,

So young Death was when he lifted the scythe from Father Time's hands, and bent to kiss Mother Earth's belly.

There was quiet from her then, for how could this voice her often miniscule meandering?

She feared So much to let go of what she knew,

The utter absences of substance, ethereal and real.

Yet the one she loved feared more so to continue without the emptiness, the silence that caressed him when his

Heart failed,

When his tender and ever so poetic spirit could not hear another cry,

or touch another tear.

No, she could not be continued,

For she had voiced her discord, and in the light

of Death's pains, it meant little.

Death fell asleep in the absence of substance, he rested his thin face against her bosom and softly breathed in her nothingness, void of the smell of life and thankfully,

Of death.

Moments would pass on earth,

one hundredth of seconds for every hour on this plane of existence.

Even so, for Death to be gone from his duties for more than a minute earth time could carry drastic consequences.

The Queen whispered to the night, staring up at the eternal gray that was her truth, humanity can be

Without Death for a few minutes still.

"Sleep, my lovely darkness. Sleep and dream of starlight." The Queen of (broken) Hearts whispered, setting his head gently down. She sang softly as he stirred, a song of ages long past. So old was the lullaby

That even its melody was lost amongst the earth.