December 2025 – Page 7 – elancharan gunasekaran

there are the other doors that bless you with anonymity while some loudly proclaim your iminent arrival along with your deepest darkest secrets gaping maws that trap you within the confines of claustrophobic walls and steal your sanity bit by bit

i might take no offense and still decide to wear your pretty face to the masquerade

rehearsals of the flesh continue until the night learns humility

a raindrop each pilgrims bring from all over to be catalogued in the consecrated vaults

children of the night take stock of unsummoned moons in an underground bunker

mends your shadow for a copper coin if you will let her the alley witch crouched at a forgotten doorway

feelings that spanned from dusk till dawn before the scales shed and the heart embraced cold iron

a patchwork of bulbous grey clouds blistered with lightning invades paradise

witness the naming of the skies as a leaf floats down an envoy between worlds

not end times but the end of darkness when eyeballs burst into ultraviolet flooding the world with a vision of luminance and iridescence