The Snake Said

            The clouds loomed above.  Lightning cracked and thunder yelled, challenging the devil. The old women walked covered by black attire with dolled-up faces, a contradiction in this sordid fate.  Dim lights betrayed their lingering eyes at dawn, dreams gone and life frail, soon to be forever forgotten as the cracked shells of unimportant, decaying dust.

The ceremonial makeup melted at the rain’s harsh command; these women ruined, now wet “witches” walking to the guideless gallows during their stolen time, raccoon eyes dark and infected with cries for innocence long gone in drowned memory.  They wanted to be pardoned to another life long and pleasant, to a haven hidden from the world and its tricks on the poor.  The arrow of desire was trapped in their minds as they looked forward, most crying for the injustice unheard by their captors’ keen yet selective ears.

They continued anyway.

The women’s burning souls blazed and roared, twisting, and playing on the emotion of their tense, stiff bodies like the spells they’d never uttered in Satan’s church, where they’d never been. There was little escape for the tormented minds save the coming death and also the final pride of a fighting flame, dignity screaming out the cursed words of the faltering reality that demanded review, for peace, for goodness, for justice!

These women wanted to be remembered beyond their time but not for mighty fame.  A slight notion of revenge brought grins to several dun, cracked faces, a disturbing sight for the crowd to wonder about, a hint of worry traveled on the wind.

 The old women were to be carbon copies, never again named with crying black streams of unholy mascara on their faces, like coal instead of glittering diamonds.  They waited their turn in the line, their own funerals in the mountains of mourning where their loved ones might have once grieved.

They were not loved due to delusional distractions of hardship, never unique in tears and fears with the poor children crying at their warm breasts to suckle just a little more.  All the same. Cellulose and loose skin had come for them all along with guilty spider veins slithering around life like Eve’s friend the snake: you are but a mortal. 

A runway train of insincerity crashed through the ignored truth that day.  The truth never boasted for esteem, a casualty of the long and difficult war, always honorable in the conduct, but weak on the world that belongs to the devil himself.  The fiend roamed and delighted in the grey graveyard at the edge of the small town where it was under his control.

The unworthy feats of the minds’ eyes brewed within the narrow scope of the crowd’s ignorance.  They cheered as the blade fell each time. The glamor painted a fierce reality of ruby gems. Those judgmental faces smiled as the women’s heads were positioned on sticks, seeds the group’s egos used to inspire the arrogant thirst of self-righteousness within this foolish crowd.  They would one day fade with the crime where they’d be equally helpless to cheering murderers, even if they had to wait for cancer or winding, ugly veins that spoke in simple words.

You are but mortal.