and wet Scylla’s whitening shode
as below it they drew a darker line.
Scylla’s belly buried the pulsing
demigod whose gusts weren’t yet
mighty enough to emancipate him.
He still needed the nourishment
draining out a distant cervix.
They would’ve tarried until nightfall
let them bury their beloved in peace.
But dusk hurried to their dim island.
Astraios crumpled his crimson creases,
harried the bluestones with his horizontal blare,
bristled above the bard’s hut,
and pried the dead princess’s womb
with his black mouth as the moon blushed.
Soon as he freed it, the fetus caught flame:
Dusk’s lip dangled grandson,
a cinder turd, as he turned his purple
look on the bard, dilating dimmer
and plunging above them as the bard’s eyes
dwindled to pores on ductile sockets.
Their fingernails united and scrolled,
their chord a blond umbilicus.
Their ears clenched the closing phrase.
Mucus tinkered, and their tongue became
a chitinous ribbon canceling song.
It took so much time to return home
where they’d never loose their love darts.
Pale lines their palinode,
they rasped lichen down the lyre’s yoke.