Metamorphosis

Silver lifeblood turns to silver dust, and the heart runs dry.
Dead soil, useless lumber, there was nothing left to try.
Homes cast aside as cocoons; one by one, the sound quells.
And here I lay, amid silence, stuck rotting in my shell.

What holds me down here, I beg to know; the binds hold so tight!
But when I try to look at them, I can never see them quite right.
The answer changes with each light that catches the chains.
Fear, duty, love, nostalgia… what so hopelessly holds my reins?

The groundskeeper cares for the graves so the families may mourn.
But there’s no dead to remember, and no visitors, just a deer forlorn.
Ivy creeps ever taller, dust grows ever thicker, rot sinks ever deeper…
And yet, fighting the rising tide, I toil ever more as its keeper.

Then one day, teeth bared, the white maw of oblivion crests the trees!
Heralded by the frenzied clamor of a crusade, smoke chokes the breeze.
By the light of apocalypse, I could finally see what held me down,
In ancient pine, wildflowers and vines, the shape of a crown...

So then, there, in my epiphany, I threw myself down at his shrine,
Pleading, casting away everything I owned, to be heard by the divine.
I knelt, sobbing, in the shadow of the belltower at midnight, the sky on fire…
And then, looked up to find an empty basin… as he emerged from the pyre.

I didn’t know his name. I didn’t recognize his face. He was… wrong.
A shaky old man dressed like a banker, whistling a quiet song.
With a serene smile, he offered me what I sought: Salvation in a vial.
Without a thought, I choked it down in one, however… vile.

Composed of a thousand colors, tasting of bitter lightning and bearing foul clots,
That terrible elixir unwound me, twisted my mind into knots within knots,
I took to the sky, a writhing prismatic pall overtaking flame,
And it was THEIR apocalypse that I became.

But in the light of dawn, when I realized the fire was no more,
I found myself unbound, torn asunder, as colorful magical gore.
And though I could piece myself together back together then,
I knew, as I came to, I would never be the same again.

This town is no longer the only thing which here shall decay,
As my poisoned soul strains at its mortal bondage, withering away.
Though I think I know now why I loved this land so,
Was it worth the debt I now owe?