Words: Orla Davey (she/her)
Possession wasn’t enough. What good was gold
unless we could live and breathe it?
With fire-brazen throats we engulfed villages, burnt them
bankrupt. Flames flickered within your grin as
shadows scattered like scorched snow
whilst we melted and merged
What was theirs became ours
tucked away where no one could touch
We couldn’t spend or sell, but you insisted
Fear was better than any bargain
Greed-glazed eyes consumed empty gleams
of cluttered gold, carving caves into
castles. Steamed embraces singed sight, blinding me to
tarnished shadows tinged with dried blood
Plasma corpses congealed in the peripheral
as we coiled in our rusted, restless mound of power
but new beginnings cannot be bought. Fear nor gold
can reincarnate innocence from corruption
Reaching for more, your exposed flesh was
finally pierced. Shadows morphed back to men, to mutiny
The last entrails of steam slither from your
remains, pitchforks parade before our castle gates
– a granite mouth gaped in terror. Poised in position
swords whinge with precision, far clearer
than dull scrapes of hollow goblets and chains
Claws clutch coin, recoiling amidst dim glints of a trove
no transaction can redeem
Burrowed in blood-money, your skeletal web of wing-bones
cannot protect what must be paid
Tears choke fire to ash, clogging my throat, refusing
an easy way out
I did this for us. I wanted that to be true
as too late I learn all the gold we ever needed
was within us; now gone.
