The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Leopard
by Sheikha A.
Thunder-pulse; the roses
on his back glisten –
He was called the predator;
she was the mating pit.
They told him she was seen
on low-rise rocks on full moon
nights – selkie-siren calling
lovers to her lair; her skin
was slate-sheen like the rocks
on which she bedded. He was
the hunger-prowl of centuries
spent wandering jungles
sparse and dense. His desires
celibate; she emerged as enigma
morphing into blood-scent.
He walked far yet never further
than his lifespan; she was gleam
of a thousand jewels, a whorl
of luring peace. She told him
of the spell; that magic makes
her ugly; that he would leave
as the magic bid; that her face
melted; that her hair shed;
that her body lost its goddess
beauty. Her blood smelled of
lavender and rose; his senses
feral, lurking like breath on bait.
Her songs were tantalising wails;
her love the rise and fall of giant
waves shattering on the beds
she burned. She sends the sea
in smooth sweeps to wipe his
prints as he walks in deeper
to where she sits stroking
her hair. She looks like heaven’s
garden in fresh cherry-bloom.
His life will be hers; her death
will be his. He feels his mind
paralyse as his paw draws
their claws to his neck.
The thrust is swift and firm.
Blood curling into roses –
Fiction © Copyright Sheikha A.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from author Sheikha A.:
Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee
“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).
Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.
Spreading the Writer's Word 
a poem of sadness and beauty, of power and lust; Death, the leveler — well done, Sheika A!
A darkly evocative poem.