Saturday, January 17, 2026

For Chris Pray

Man of crazed calm and molten core, 

your heart is a shelterer of storms.

Conjurer of epiphanies and luminary darkness, 

you saunter through mazes and labyrinths, 

smug in your perfect lostness. 

You drive black horses through a prairie of stone. 

You are the heart of a body beating, bent, alone. 

You scour the stars, searching for stigmata,

listening for a rose. 

You champion the space between dreams 

with the tips of your fingers, 

wiping sweat and grime from your ashen brow.

Long has been the time your questions have remained unanswered. 

Never will they be answered. 

The season is already readying itself for your death. 

You shudder in the cold, taking note 

of each vertebrae, like raspberries 

and their seeds in the grip of your thumb and forefinger, 

rolled and tasted, a painful bliss. 

You stand ready at the edge of the abyss, 

speaking no words, expecting no echo. Chris,

there are no words to speak, 

no breath to take. We are lost 

upon the last vestige of a world 

fleeing into the past.

And that, too, is where we must go.


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