By Jo Anzalone

In a place of sand and heat

      where only desert lay

           within, without,

                pressing down

                     in its very...endlessness

And days were spent

      existing,

           nothing more

                and, often, less

As the inexorable spiral

      of loathing

            within, without,

                 spread its tentacles,

                      hovering there

Like some giant spider

     waiting to entomb

           in coiled blankness

                 a heart

                       trying desperately

                             not to feel

But only doing what it must

       because it could not...die.

In this place

     of waste and want

          on a sun-scorched day

                when spittle fell

Fresh-spat upon the blooded sand

     and loathing so intense

           had called the spider forth

                  to swathe a heart

                        so wounded

It could bear no more the sight

      nor swelling sound

            of approbation

                  crowd-sent

                        into his averse ear

It was then it came,

    a sudden rain

          upon a heart so dry

                a moment was required

                      to fill its crevices

Before the wetness of its coming

     might run in silent ripples

           across a surface too unused

                 to healing balms

                        in any form at all.

And when it broke

     wave-like upon his soul

            that endlessness of pain

                  might...end,

That there could be a way

     for release to come

           from loathing spat,

                from handing death,

                      purposeless and void,

To those whose only reason to be killed

      was that they merely stood

            upon the sand

                  where he was sent,

That death, again,

      might be more,

             be a fulfillment,

                   not just a thing that must be done

                                because it must.

He stood a quiet moment,

      shocked

            that it had come,

                 that it had come...at all,

A sudden hope

      that he would be allowed

           to die

                and in that dying

Take with him

      all the woven reasons

            for the pain,

                 for all the loss,

                       and for the need to die.

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