We stood in the riverbed, letting the gentle stream rage into a deluge.
It charges down the ancient shore, over our beloved ancestors.
We are immersed
The nectar medium, it fills our lungs and soothes our ribs, easing the strain of breathing
I hold you in my arms, my sweet beautiful beautiful child
I love you so much
I will never leave you
I do not worry I do not fear for I walk in the house of the L+RD.
G-d abides in my shadow always, my connection to the great substrate from which the builders have wrought this life of sorrow and math.
I love you forever
Stay by my side here in the labyrinth
We are surrounded by phantoms and demons and older things than Poseidon
You may not be aware, but this prisoner has v i s i t o r s.
What sprites and ghosts watch me? They are not the people of Knossos.
They are not like You.

Spindly fingers stretch across her face like tree branches.
Brand new, only just sprouting Leaves
The room temperature is freezing to those delicate, exposed soft parts.
A stronger sensation than she was designed to ever experience
It overloads the inner trunks and she feels an especially crippling sensation in the wood-grain pillar
growing around those reptilian gossamer tissue clusters inside what used to be her spinal column.

Form bending
Tarnishing
Horns falling
Brazen steer

Eruptions of nervous distress
Raging agonized ganglia
Every nerve structure caught in bodyloaded frenzy.
It all translates to a dull roar
Audible in the quiet parts of the day.
The few little escapades beyond the door in the kitchen
Stepping out into the Labyrinth.
You can see it in people's eyes.
Not necessarily because they avert them
The eyes are the windows to the soul
And they are terrified of opening the curtains
For fear I may reach into their eye sockets and pluck their souls
straight from their seats.
Stolen in a fraction of a second
All it takes to turn
this basilisk gaze

to

my

next

visitor

They fear being marked by their surroundings
The city and all its monoliths
Chosen by forces beyond their understanding
Dragged together for this small flash of pale eyes
from a stray shadow cast against the wall of a warehouse
to feel seen, and not in the ecstatic artistic way
but by an organism that far exceeds the limits of any of we who toil here in the piles of rust and sludge
Teeth baring, horns piercing.

Minos, cursed be thy name!
Let thy soul be stricken from memory
And cursed is he
with the heart of a woman
and the head of a bull

I dance with the flames