Jayvielynn Veronica Santos
Author
Grazell Francia
Graphic Artist
Né De Nouveau
His loyalty turned to a bitter taste of resentment so cruel,
He birthed those of springs and summers of plenty antinovels,
The fall full of demise and hatred that wouldn’t just end
This will mark the start of the end, soon it will be uncoffined
From the mist of the clouds, the mirror breaks into a light haze,
You turn and see blood running down like tears—it’s near,
As it threw its poison, there’s no escape, glaring at your heart ablaze,
You turn to witness it’s not flesh, it’s built of miasma and fear
She’s familiar, so pure, a taste lost in the crowd of bland spices,
He’s the sweet song of lullabies turned into a hum of cries
It hithers you back into a world that, as wonderful as it guises,
Broke the substratum underneath to watch as all of you dies
Every nerve in your body writhing in agony so familiar,
How alluring—the epitome of afterlife radiance—such bliss,
Weakened and wounded, is this what the shadow reaper saw from afar?
Bodies now reuniting with the ground though it feels amiss,
One more blink and you will tear the last drop of water in your body
Restraining yourself from further despair as it turns you to ashes
Last laughs from those who watched your demise with such rhapsody
Bewildered by how they echoed a taste for your death, filling their fetishes
There was pure silence, a very first in all times you lost tranquility
Did all this end because of a fall that lasted for a minute?
Losing all light and ember of hopes resulting to views so violently,
Deciding to reside below the dirt and into flames defied my finite
All so sudden. A shimmer of astras with open arms form a pathway,
An odyssey came surrounding my corpse as it rises, yearning for a rebirth
“Anagénnisi ángelé mou,” rebirth my angel they said, wishing for my rise that day,
Reopening these eyes as if it’s been years before I tasted this airth
Such luminescence from inside me flowed out from skies to buds of lotus,
Chortles turning to a visible shock; never knew I would come back
This was the time I held my head high, avenging my unplanned hiatus
Even rift walkers were amazed at how I handled this sense of black
As a new era came blooming I would mark my words and continue thriving,
Gold collides with ashes but ashes would never be my demise
Last paragraphs would present our stories—not our ending,
Our happily ever after started after we peak and arise.