Not a prayer

Fingers twitching nervously reaching for the paste, he creeps his letters to the paper at a dismal, cautious pace.

Leaning forward, looking hard, his eyes stand at a still, fingering each word with patience, the torture of this thrill.

Born and raised a godly man he forgets not all his teachings but condemns not all the work he’ll do against all of the preaching. 

Hold but now the final straw, God’s touch is now aghast, feed the evil against the will and squint right by the past.

He pines now for different times but time is all but still, a nucleus of hope, a magic coping pill?

Nothing comes, so he must go, ahead and make his way, he pastes the last word to the page and sends it out today.

Fingers twitching nervously he cracks the spit sealed letter, arrived but an hour before, a time when he felt much better.

Here is was, the sum, of a mind gone lone and dark.  An answer to his inane request, a way to make his mark.

In his room so cramped and quiet one single bulb does fall, he reads the words of his reply, his own letter he can’t recall.

His eyes shift quickly across the page needing each moment to be the latter, he tries to turn the page, his fingers growing fatter.

His cheeks are hot and saliva too as he swallows the last detail, “Give me what you know I want and do it without fail.”

He reads, “If you don’t the only compromise you will chance to find is the extinction of your sad and sickly kind!”  

Hurt, he cries, as if done wrong, he sees not what his brought; no longer recalls the prayers he heard or the preachings he was taught.

In reflection he’s brought back to this reality he’s consumed, a girl cries out in longing need, she knows her life is doomed.

Forever darkened she will be, her soul etched by him; a world of difference she now sees, eyes so bright now dimmed.

Keeling over she looks down to see what mess she’s in; he smiles weakly at the shadow, embarrassed of this sin.

Eyes rolled back, his hands around what little neck he wears, his victim’s wonder at his stupidity and how little that she cares.

Never heard of in her time, a person would rather lie but she does in this new life wish a man to die.

In the crooks of his simple mind complexity does reside, on a shelf he keeps his wit, never quite his bride.

In here dark and in here deep, the basement is this place; leaves so very little room for luxuries like grace.

He tells her, “quiet!” but means no harm, he just can’t take her pain, he knows this moment in her life is a moment he obtained.  

She studies him and plots his death as he requoints she’s sure, his looks are dark and his walk is crooked but so much of hims a blur.

The walls are cold and peeling and water seeps and stains, so much of death in this space that little life remains.

Give so much, he’ll take no less, she wonders what will do, to bring her out into the world that she still once knew.

With this new request sitting warm on his cold plate, he walks and stumbles toward her place, she studies his awkward gait.

She squints his way and soon concludes, he’s nothing to the eye, painful acknowledgment of this sight, he’s a rather simple guy.

On the streets but days before she would not have noticed his passing by, irony sets in coldly as by his hand she’ll die.

He touches her cheek and they shrink away, both disgusted by the touch, she in fear for purity and he, can’t love so much.

A sigh unties the woman’s arms and soon after her tired legs, for her silence can she live, the woman’s sobs do beg.

Pulling her close, he tries again, to desire this soft, white skin, he shudders quietly and releases her, revulsion his greatest sin.

Confused, she pauses to see his pain, this weak and despondently creature, he flinches in thoughts, already forgotten is this daughter of a preacher.