The Epitaph

It was the night when the battle turned.

The speaker sat back

There was gas in their eyes and hatred,

Blackened like needles,

Though dirty still,

And twice as sharp,

Laid out on their tongue, foreign and choking and bitter.

And with time stopped,

The speaker saw a door

Opening

In the mind or on the surface of the shields

Fashioned like the dark liquid crystal in their hand,

The door to the dream.

But this was night, not the dream.

This door had a voice

Was it familiar?

The speaker thought of their mother,

Their mentor,

Or perhaps the writer,

Who raised them when they needed a dream.

But it was a different voice.

And it asked,

Are you right?

And the speaker asked if this was too far

They said that their fingers burned like bombs

And the hurt in the others’ eyes.

The speaker said,

Tell me the line.

And the voice said that there is no line, 
That the line exists in the context of imagination and reality and folkway and taboo

And the speaker asked to see its face

So the voice stepped closer,

Freed its hair

Let its crows feet and veins flow like rivers,

Like a fjord,

Melting deer paths in glaciers,

Immense and yet malleable still.

Oh.

The voice was the speaker.

Come as if from the future

Wizened beyond recognition,

Raised by mother,

The mentor,

And the writer.

The voice was its own, however.

It asked,

If you could bless immortality on a single limerick,

Which would you choose?

You will only be an epitaph,

In the end.

What is your footnote?

The voice came closer,

And read its legacy aloud.

And it said that the the line may disappear from view

And the rivers may fork

But the thread of time will never falter
And to sew with it,

You must know this:

You can change the world with passion alone,

But you cannot make it better without love.