Young and naïve, armchair explorer,
Learning Chinese because Spanish was normal
Taller than most, and weaker than many,
But quick with a pen and a smile
Hair black like Raven's, fingers that flew,
Pigmented much like a midwinter snowflake
Played on a fiddle (though not by that name),
Wrote stories that featured real people
He was a guppy, a fine large-mouthed bass,
Raised on Fitzgerald and Brontë and Shakespeare
Who wanted to please, to be loved, to be needed,
And bought it all, hook, line, and sinker
Stories of hate, chock-full of lying,
Horrors and blood-bonds, back-biting Envy
He took up the knife because she said she'd done it
Used his own skin as a canvas
Embittered and frightened, texting past midnight,
Lying to parents he once thought were precious
The smiles were gone, of scars, there were many,
Traced by a second-hand blade
Then came the silence, week after week,
Talks with a clipboard, a beard, and a shrink
The "burying sickness," where secret hates hide,
Hope for a glimpse of the Raven
"I've seen both her hands, the scars don't exist,
No cross where her blood and her Envy did mix"
The veil, it is torn from the portrait of Gray,
And secret hates now turn aside
A card at the ball, "This came from her hand!"
The character with all the features of language
"She told me forever," he laughed to his date,
The wastebasket welcomed the note
Long years have passed, Raven has vanished
Her charms, they have ceased to beguile his head
And tears that once flowered in Dorian's heart,
Have forgotten, it seems, how to flow
A new dawn begins where once there was night,
A new life has bloomed in a once-sullen eye
A new name now dances on smiling lips,
A new heart now beats in his chest
"Forgive and forget," the old adage says,
Yet memory clings like a limpet, and though
Forgiveness is present, the matter is finished,
And Raven must find other skies
