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Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Lacuna
by Sheikha A.

Thunder caws — sigil burnt. After tonight, she will be every where like a picture imprinted in his mind. He will carry her like an emblem on his skin; she will clamp on, and his bones will open, without resistance, to receive her. How she sets fire will be a thing of mystery as he scrapes with nails of blood

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cawing thunder —

smell of bone-rust

spitting embers 

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to erase her memory, She will be scripture in the wind, waves of her presence coursing through his veins. A dry rose waits in a metal cup — for fire — a candle to be struck lit, and a soft flame of topaz heat 

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rimming rose reduce with love amber ash

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he, who called her plain like a haunting stem of stars that conjured no fright, and her echoes did not make his heart shiver. There was always someone more ghostly, like a voice driving splits into canyons, and emerging as an undelivered curse — so beautiful — so raw — unclaimed by the mortal world; someone pure and profound like a spell passed down since centuries — olden — uncut —

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ancient moon

burning at midnight 

— latching cords 

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exuberant and fresh, her true form will show him how she will be everywhere, and nowhere. The dry rose is fully burnt — breathing atoms of undone life. She draws her next sigil: wings of crow holding fallen thunder. His flesh will burn in sweet avoidance, her trap narrowing against his oblivion 

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lacuna stars alight altar empty rolling metal cup

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and when he thinks she has been obliterated, from the nightly scar delicately handled to his skin, she will seep —

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.

Available Here!