must I be a snake coiling into myself,
a perfect circle of me biting my tail,
scales rankling bedlam like lead
in the white of mid-day moon,
but only seeing black,
asleep to a beat
that lasts a
lifetime.
I can
hear a pulse
far away from
the body that is mine,
that sheds tarnished skin
and like ash blown from ember
I will awake again alive in the truth
that I am unbound forever in red gold.