Bandages of the Beast

There were many random omens. Sending olive branches with thorns was only one of your repertoire. You offered me a book where all the answers lay encoded in some strange dialect. Symbols undulating like serpents restless for food. If I was windborne as a lambent seed you would still the air and I would fall into the thicket. If I yearned for sweet water you would pass me the bitter cup. If I was an injured fawn you would flush me from the cloister, corner me against cold stone, and admire my fear. Everywhere I steer I seek the one look of love; yet love humbles itself like a mannequin changing its clothes to accommodate the dressmaker. Underneath there are bandages of the beast. Underneath there is the tourniquet of deliverance. But beneath the shell there is emptiness, so defiant it is clothed in finery that neither dressmaker nor beast can touch. You have mistaken my search as my soul. Raking through it for clumps of wisdom, you have found only what I have lost to you. Held like rootless dreams I will vanish in your touch. If you pass your rake over this emptiness you will feel clumps of my spirit. You will find me like tiny pieces of mirror broken apart yet still collected in one spot. Still staring ever skyward. Still reflecting one mosaic image. Still the accompanist of myself