A Body Ravaged

Beneath the moon’s unblinking eye

Where shadows coil and secrets lie

The circle drawn in ashen white

A dance of flesh, a whispered rite

The air is thick with iron’s scent

A hymn to pain, a heart’s lament

The veil of night drapes cold and thin

A shiver crawls beneath the skin

The watchers chant with breath held tight

A dirge of loss, an endless night

In hands they clutch the tools of sin

The silver keen, the serpent’s grin

No cries, no screams, just muffled sighs

As skin and spirit intertwine

The soul laid bare, the mask undone

An offering beneath the sun

Threads of life are pulled and torn

Unraveled soft, like fields of corn

Each layer peeled, a whispered prayer

Each strip a truth, a soul laid bare

They work in rhythm, slow and sure

The hands that strip, the hearts that cure

For in the taking, something’s freed

A soul unbound, a sacred need

The figures stand in cloaked disguise

With hollow faces, hollow eyes

They weave the rite with shadowed care

And lift the veil with tendrils bare

No light but that of candle’s gleam

No sound but breath, a strangled dream

Each motion slow, each gesture cruel

A somber art of ancient rule

They paint the ground in crimson lines

A script of old and twisted signs

Each mark a vow, each stroke a song

Of sins that writhe and right the wrong

And as the skin is stripped away

The stars above begin to sway

For night itself bears witness here

To secrets dark and ever near.  

The sky, indifferent, coldly peers

As flesh and fear and fate adheres

A sacrament of bone and thread

A hymn for those who walk the dead

For in the act, the circle spins

A dance of blood, a purge of sins

And all is left in silent night

The echoes of a fleeting light