Calcified

You find it on the hearth, a tiny thing,

still a flutter beneath the calcified outer.

The warmth inside has faded to a simple prickle

that decreases every moment.

 

How did it get there, who cast it aside

to continue on their life without it,

hoping to never feel the pain and uncertainty that love can bring,

while forgetting how their view of everything

becomes just that little bit brighter for it?

 

You cradle it, unwanted heart,

hold it close to your own so it can share your heat,

build up a rhythm to restore its strength.

 

You guide it until it can beat on its own

and then let it make its way

back to the world

where it can find that reason to glow again.

Blood Magic

The world has changed,

the blood cries to me every night,

screaming through my veins

and the veins of my heirs.

It can feel the doors closing,

feel the separation, the desperation

the fear eating at people’s bones.

 

Old as I am, the locks have never been used.

A person could walk from here to the other side

and back again.

 

Yet orders have been given, magic has been stripped

and we have been exiled,

the youngest forced to spill their life force

to form the seal.

There will be no more of us now.