Niobe
Extinguish this need, dear one. Let the wounds heal and the saints see to this ache.
Pray the Rosary five times that my Tower will not shatter to ashes, but be a lamp, a lighthouse fracturing the night, signaling the sin-weary home.
Tantalus taught me well, how to yearn, but not how to heal. But still, I can warn them away.
Feel the soft wake of drowning water at your feet. In the dim, eternal Acheron, a loaded boat slips past.
Where is the shining shore? Where does the choir gather? Recite the prayers. Chant! Evoke the sacred, even as these bodies fall away, evaporate.
Our bones are still buried in fields of stars. The sky is seeded with galaxies that know your name.
We are clay, space dust, with offspring too heavy to hold, too far away to see, planets churning up orbits.
Set me on fire, to warn them we forget.
And we founder so easily.
Tantalus taught me well, how to yearn, but not how to heal. But still, I can warn them away.