The Fifth Day

1
All day the sepia ghost
of a harvest moon speeding
through nimbus.
She has searched from
tower to vault — nowhere the clue
she needs to enter his mind,
unlock its secret chamber.
The key burns against her palm;
the stones grow colder. Her lamp
bores through the tunnel's damp air.
She can imagine his covert
return, that he's stalking her
now, watching as the lock clicks,
the door swings wide. She enters…
A floor shinily crimson
as if blood had been frozen
over it. Trompe l'oeil walls
show painted doors with glinting
keys. One door unseals itself
to show a crucible of
knife-worked faces, butchered limbs.
And does she wish now — hearing
the slammed door, his slow footfall,
slurred breathing — does she wish now
to untell this story and
create another ending?
Her arms are raised in the strength
and powerlessness of grief,
making her careless of death,
wild to live.
The key printed
on her flesh begins to bleed:
vermilion tears run down
the soft green folds of her gown.
2
He has wound in narrowing
circles back to her — distance,
he always finds, makes the heart
doubt itself — first the relief,
then the fear: he who controls
by absence suddenly foiled,
the puppet master jerked back.
Now he'll penetrate her soul
in the only way he can…
His mole's bulk steers itself through
old passages in his brain
to where blood drips from her hem
as she stands, offering back
his key — with eyes that will not
be held to account, or fill
with terror; with a sealed mouth
that will not explain, or plead,
or ask for time, or mercy.
His gaze moves beyond her to
the room of murdered women,
finding nowhere what he seeks —
helpless soft body frantic
in the web of guilt he's spun.
How he longs for the cliché
of discovery, of eyes
beginning to read the book
of their future. His breath slows;
his voice, his spittle, dry up.