Crimson spreads across the west. The eastern edge bleeds softly, pale stars on blue, stripes of red and tender white, a flag the sky hangs out by itself.

Flower scent, caught in the teeth of the dark, drifts sideways on the wind.

*

One rises, one falls. Your loss, my betrayal, hanging over the trembling land like smoke from a single lamp.

*

With the sound of bones licked clean, the counting goes down into me, takes root in the hollow of my soul, and splits what had been whole.

*

Neighbor and neighbor, eyes meeting across the void. No word is spoken, yet the silence is a battlefield.

*

I had fallen like a beast at the trough, gasping in the mire of the news.

Then one flowering tree, and my body was already rising before I knew it.

The blossoming tree, death itself standing before me in a bridal veil, reminding me that every throne is only for a season.

*

I no longer want to win. If I could ask for anything, I would ask only to see a human face again across the aisle, and in it, the Friend.

*

Past midnight a thin old moon rises in silence. Whoever wins tonight, perhaps it is her turn to grieve for all of us.