A putrid smell drained the liquids from my eyes as I reluctantly approached. An unknown journey of this length brought its own risks. Chosen I was not, yet I stood before the looming gates, upon which a sign read: the city of rot. A tongue and a foot had made a home underneath. Pale they had turned in the shadows of the bars. As I walked slowly through the city, my sensitive eyes were forced to blink the everyday lives of the citizens; a death by comparison. The living would eat from the rotting bodies of the fallen ones who paved the streets in skin. The raped childbearing colored the ground with their broken hymens, as the ones with able legs splashed a crimson song. Ugly children mocked me from behind shattered windows. The cemetery lied empty for it lacked shovels; its jagged bones, stolen and scattered, ripped the tender flesh of my feet. Disregarded food rested at the foot of a starving vagrant; the untouched meal poisoned by a drop of urine, as a passing animal sought relief. A deep well scarred the earth in the middle of the town. A well built by fools who lacked the water by which to fill it. A few rested upon their bruised knees in prayer before it; preparing or wasting away. I approached the stone shape to glance inside. I too was ready for worship, but my god, she hides.

Kneeling. My prayers have died before crimson skies. The children's screams echo no longer. This well is to be forever empty to my lips. A cloud of tears could not stain its sandy skin. My god; when she hides I must join in her game. Now, let her rot in eternal silence behind strange new walls. And let me leave before my scarred knees become bones.

Prepared to leave; too frightened to stay. An indecisive thought is so easily controlled. The magnificent stone shape appears to beckon me closer. A single touch was one too much. Echoing prayers race ahead in the dark. Plummeting shrieks find a home at the bottom. Silence. I awake clad in black; far beneath what I knew, far below brightened skies. Trapped inside of my empty god, a killing thirst alive inside. Water might rush beneath this dusty grave. Uncertainty. Climb or dig or sleep. The calm is upset by my quiet pleas, of thoughts that twin my crimson knees, and doubts that doubt if I should leave.

A foul smell. My peaceful dream is upset. Opened eyes that see no change. Uncertainty breeds uncertainty. A liquid rains down, stinging my useless view. My god; she does not bleed me her life. The animals are reaching from above to mock my thirst; bathing me in stench. Frustration. Time has no place down here. My world is one season. My knees find their engraved homes, and signal my pallid hands to begin. This task is mine alone to bear; ignorance my only food. Such a familiar sound is heard, as my claws struggle inside the reddened floor. Searching for her wetness. One taste will grow to feed me. Shifting. Somewhere she is whole. The scratching falls silent as it rises on the curving sides. It will not disturb the light. A sun is guarded by the surrounding white sky. A sun whose precious gift is shared by those high above. I hear its words but once a day; it drives the common black away. It then will fall, and steal my eyes. If only its voice would speak freely, my hands might be moist. A killing thirst. Cleanse me now, or fill me with sand. Silence. Scratching heard nowhere. Enclosed in walls, my city calls, as blackness falls, once more.

If hell has shape, these blind eyes might never see death. Dry lips that babble nonsense. Sanity dances through my sleep. This thirst yields not to control. This well wants water. This flesh needs blood. Sometimes now, I awake on my own; disturbed or rested. I dream of the day far above -- oh its false promises -- an escape plan was made never to be used. I am alone when my words echo not, but still I must speak them; for somewhere they are captured and held. Knees safe in homes. Hands are lead by blind intentions. They must have strength to hold nothing before they can learn to hold water. My shifting eyes move faster than these hands can follow. Let me close them. Let me truly close them and listen. Unseen adjustment. Voices from another direction. Beneath the sand is held no stream; it is past these stones that waves are seen. For while I wait in endless dim, these walls might bleed and feed my skin. The sun. The white voice deafens all as it speaks its routine. The light shines brighter as tomorrow adjusts me. I am lead to a rock, and left at its mercy. Time does not seem to worry my god as it does me; thirst might still be her unknown. My hands feel its mortared edges in search of weakness. Grasping. Mere strength will not budge this gray. Struggling. If this should fall to the sands below, the others might yet be reached. Should the walls part with enough offspring, my god might finally share me her drink. Uncertainty. The tides will flow if I wait till forever.

Empty hands from swollen flesh. Strength in change goes through, not out. Nothing is from nothing given. Dry from dry. Moist from moist. I will speak with no sound, and silence shall be echoed. I will fill this well with myself. Nothing else to exploit. The deeper traveled the lessor the screams. Something is given returned. A drop for a drop. Turn on oneself for oneself. The ground is as bare as I am not. For through these limbs flow golden red; one taste is love, one more is dead. Then love, then dead, once more about. To drink it in gives strength to out. Waves pulse forth. I need no more than I want. Emptied. Less makes more from none. Filled. More makes less from all. I think of high above. Thirst has nothing left to offer. The past will always be present. The city of rot is higher from below. What once disgusted would now be favored. If only I could leave this hole. Before it was weakness; now rock is stained in wet. A sickened reach leads not. Left alone to feed my mind on itself. Denial of realization is the consummation of emptiness. So high to mount. I tire. Let me dream of want. Let me wake in need.

A dream of night; the sun sheds. A newness faults all past itself. A low that none are spared. Fear will flourish each moment betrayed; finally untouched by reason. We exist not always in entirety, with a well that is before I. Different enough to spoil solidity. Similar enough to barter thought; ridiculed. The night will cower from change, breeding vice. A well of finished build and insentient cliffs, with room left not for earnest spills. She swallows thirst to vomit guilt; a rain that falls in the sea. In dark the lips will mock faith. A monument, regressed by the city's instillment. A hole, with reach not of depth but magnitude; to some, a seemingly tasteless shoal. To speak without pause is to lose what is meant. The meek retain as the humble receive. Soon might she awake, for a mouth fairer than is known. A dripping might spout, given multiple outings. But for us here to stay, growth must embark on different ways.

A dream of day; the dark walks. The first morning my well and I might share. A high by none compared. Riddles passed for ages last for ages; finally binding dry and wet as hereafter. The well and I share this day's entirety, to learn ourselves as one another. Similar enough to retain difference. Different enough to allow opinion; honored. The day will pass through change, harboring conjecture. The sun is gaily incessant, be it noon, dusk, or dawn. It feeds all one needs, as hope; an aid to loosen what would be if allowed. In light the eyes will shield shadows. A beauty, raised by the sun's candor. A well, newly built with aged stone, still to herself the boundaries unknown; to me, a disease without remedy. To learn one pleasure is a promise of remembrance. The wise learn; the ignorant learn the wise. Soon I will wake, to face thoughts past my own. My thirst might survive, given truth where sand lies. But for love here to swell, day must fare from this well.

The dreams will face what the thoughts will veil. The days and nights will always be; change brought little. Forever is a life ended; failing its potential. Forever is absurd. My faith lies in doubt, for in doubt I may refuse. Every choice bears denial. Thoughts can spoil flesh. I waited long for the notice of a city, with a well to fill with myself, and rot within. Its witness brought meaning as I suffered. I stayed for a chance to be a beginning; a thirst creating a spill. Now I had my god. But she refused to be vulnerable. One day brought what the next would withdraw. But she lacks my fault, so let her lack my blame. The possible can easily seem expected. If this city, these buildings with voice, stay standing; if this well, this body, stays worshipped; if the unseen stays in trust; then another moment passed will carry forever. Now I will wake. Soon I will climb.

Tiny speck upon the wall. A drop of illusion. The taste of humiliation. A wretched leg's journey through burnt tongue. A body consumed in ignorance; I never wish this again, but mine is a beggar's heart to hold. Chains, fingers linked; to break, not be broken. I am as offered, to this, my shrine of spoil. A god that sees as is seen. A statue of home. The sway of stone is the scourge of alone. A faith learnt is a faith questioned. A faith that never falls never stood. Someday a decision. The want must slay the whole of need. The beast is the beast it is not; ingested from within. I am, and am as garbed; a thought in foreign rind, to fathom a new day's end. A hole I have fallen. A hole I complete. A hole for this hole. A lesser grip on this, my heart or haste. The tethered must not, but the unseen as stone. A route always shunned. A perspective. A flight from the sands of breath. Quickened. Lids are spent, yet touch the mind. Knees ask of their motives. A mouth forgets. The sun must burn. The faith must heal. The wind is a belch. Here is above. There is below. A way will be paved. The skies will cry when the martyr comes to collect.

The absurd is not. A city surrounds. I stand, a hunter, and watch, but am not. Life began here; it might begin again. An offering is needed. A victim created. The well will beckon; the wound of a face. A crack to be filled. A pain from pleasure removed. These stones that lay; the god of a searing mouth. Flesh over thought. Thought over blood. If thirst remains, scent divides. A prayer still lost to be found. And though these wooden lips stand parched, I wish not sun of day nor storm, but only the shadows veil of mourn for heaven's burden. Never a choice. Always an influence. Memories of pasts swallow now when remembered; of depths sought to elude skies, and a void filled with the void itself. With fingers learned and fingers raped; bleeding sand and deafened eyes, and patterns on the walls. But I could never leave. I was never here. Far had I crawled. Far the trail of sand. And they would follow; the children of ugly. With whispers of shift and knowledge of drink; tombing seed with borrowed feed, in footprints of the wind. Now I stand, the victim, before my god. And now I kneel. Lulled in trance and prayer of zeal. This shape might cage my yen. This depth might drown a sin. My veins have purged volition. I approach, and lay upon its peak. Head bowed. A vision clogged. A shade of dark divulges nothing but secrets. An urge of tears. An urge of spit. An urge to learn this well my drought. A taste. A taste would murder. And death is not forgiven yet, be it hers or not; it is as I am. And my claim is its possession. Now comes the flood. Not of sea but awareness. A moment of imperfection. A moment with eyes of my god. A moment passes. Someone is crying. A fear of exploitation; desires trade with coins. A sky, a stranger, that steal of her body. Born within the dirt. Chained to a city of rot. Gifted with mouth but never voice, by those spent of fluids craved. Her claim are their possession. A well is its water, fending as to be. Forsaken are the emptied; worshipped are the entire. Silence below. Silence above. I will not address. I will see with my eyes. I will sit, a beast, and dream upon the wake of tides, to which my face of fear will hide.

All is unchanged, as change waits upon me for nothing. A truth was swallowed in sand; deceiving earth. I breath the sun that rouses the city to be. I walk unknown, the vagrant, amongst familiarity, weaving a tale unto myself. Urgency stays in change. The blind eyes of my well are following; secured within. Too far from my sound sits the god, though still she may see, and so I may see her. The fair shape of ugly reminders. I will see her, and the beast she sees will scare back the man. A reflection cast over me. I killed the dream for I feared in its goodness. I sipped the drink that all have sought, and its taste was dry on my lips. All was spilled in the rush. An end ending. Moving near for room to flee. My own sand to bury me. So let me be buried.

Here lies my gift of sadness. Afraid my god will see with my eyes. If she is my hatred, I too am her punishment, but not her only one. My worship has grown alone. This well bore a city. This city built a well. Here I thieve to receive; for now. Forever. Accused innocence fears not deviance. Her generosity is lost in complacence. She would slave a saint in the ambivalence of rape. If thirst dies, then most it shall take. Passion yields obsession out of fear, not love. And my love is greater than the sum of my rewards. But my faith needs. It needs the sun to fill this mold, so it may wield and not bury, and I might be and not fend. The unseen builds upon itself. Its body lies not with but without. Its end is the end. I am as I think. Moving far for room to fill. If my prayers are in routine, she will answer what is known. I approach the stone shape to climb inside. When my sleep is empty, my thoughts rest elsewhere. A victory over words spoken, but a defeat to voices imagined. She is more than the sum of unknowns. One day beauty might return. Change is not beyond me. A risk of loss for verve. A city built to fall. A well worshipped in hate. The decay of a mind over fed. And so let rot give birth.

A means to climb. A journey of top to bottom. Threats that threaten themselves. A well, a city, a home. The end was mistaken. A gift of pride for worth. I am as naked; our skin does touch, though our tongues might never. Afraid without faith, or afraid without. A well without. It stood when I was not, and so may it always. A discovery of alone; to know another needs the awareness of self. I walk indifferent, the beast, and wait for revelation spent or whispers removed. Unclothed secrets release me from uncertainty. I drank of my thirst when new and replete; be it gone before it is I. Afraid to be, and never be. I fear my warmth exhausted in depths of dispelling shell, in this my newly flooded well. I fear my god fears not. More shared in my leave than in my wake. I wish myself a greatest pleasure; I can only be where I am. The sky rains over all, hanging a muddy sun. All is wet; such choice of drink. If it is she in my throat, then this night might taste of her dreams. If it is she under foot, then this day might taste of my sorrow. The thoughts of a man; with all their ugly charms.

The sky rules all beneath it. Silence brought curses brought nothing. The desired is now expected. The bottom has led up. Mine was all before the city, before I came. Once there were other cities. Other wells. Other wants; never mated. I was vile without favor. A beast or man, contending apathy. My appeals are suffered entire. I speak my own virtue, with always a word withdrawn. I am my greatest pleasure; this I trust my god, but none below. The unseen must fail completion. I would lose my all, so my well might lose none. Thieving the last drink would lose the sense of her. A sin forgiven leaves me its final judge. Here was never simple, but here was simple enough. The city of rot was my solution; a man without, saving against oblivion. But I was never a prayer answered. Her shape led, her thirst fed, and her warmth grew me. I stayed, for I too was not prepared. She drank before she could swallow; now we must both remove. Now I doubt, with sympathies felt for burdens carried; hiding all but a perfect me. But this god should be allowed my flaws, myself, before she allows me forever. A well without is a city that has to be, and be judged. I have to be. This has to be. If not always, always will be remembered. Here will never be equaled. Here should never be fully realized.

Who is to see who I am; a slave of ignorant thirst, with friends lent to fantansies, and guilt reasoned through misplaced desire. I wait for more of her, as she waits for all of me. What would one moment of difference bring, when the reality imagined is removed of flaw. And could I leave this well, for just that time, knowing that all that I have had, is all that I am.