On a Flower's Petal

We are travelers of a wayward sort. The first inhabitants are trying to reach us. They have followed the forlorn gaze of our one good eye. They've been calling for ages, appearing at the portals of creation. The winds have come and gone in all that time and tides have washed away the rocks until there is nothing but seaweed fashioning itself into shadows of the moon. The moon is the last remaining witness of marauders who, in the fateful hours before dawn, are slipping into labyrinths to evade the scribes and to scheme with their medicine man, the pied piper of the ingenuous. The piper is not who he appears to be. He is a highway man robbing the birds to feed the trolls, in league with an impersonator of Hekate. She is attended by many magistrates and guarded by her dogs of paper targets, while she bathes in a stream of lies at the crossroads of first breath and last chances. Her path is lit by many torches and lined with prisoners from the underworld, who strain to reach her mouth with the hanging fruit of Turtle Island.

The mountain of visages lies dormant beneath our sun. The true watchers are ancient and bear no resemblance to a granite homage in these attenuated times. The peaks will be remembered as they were first manifest. Stone and solid before the chisel's blade bore its mark upon their perfect wisdom.

The early ones beckon us to follow the stars, while we still have space to vanquish the plots of malefactors. They have watched the exalting of jesters who have sworn their loyalty to the Regent of Hesperides, a useful barbarian to the toad barons. Beneath the regent's throne sits the silent screamer, with crazy eyes and backward glances, as he interprets the words from his lord's vacuous and lashing tongue. The regent will soon be dispatched by the ranking amphibians for clapping his hands and stomping his feet out of time.

The halls are filled with pawns and vipers. It is time to return with the first ones through the portals from whence they came. There, on a flower's petal, in the realm of what will forever be, we can turn and watch the dissolution of all that never was, before it flourished and spread, deep within the idle chambers of our lonely minds.

-Mariah E June 2025