Veins of Decay
He drifts where candlelight trembles in windows sealed by dread,
A shadow riding wind that bends the poplar dead,
No chariot nor thunder, but a silence that creeps along the edge of breath,
And in that hush, every cough is prophecy,
each shiver whispers death.He’s the chill that lingers
when the warmth should return,
The memory of fever in flesh that will not learn.Under eaves, behind curtains,
in the hollow of beds,
He writes invisible warnings, a script of the dead.
His hand is patient—no sword to brandish, no grand decree—Just a soft invasion,
a trespass through skin and memory.He passes through cities
that once pulsed with commerce and cheer,
And with every handshake, every secret, every touch,
he draws near.Flesh puckers and wilts as if touched by ancient plague,
The veins go black beneath the surface,
veins like poisoned eggs.The streets grow empty, except for the echo of wheeze,
Dust dancing with motes of virus, the world brought to its knees.
No barricade holds him—not brick, nor prayer, nor oath,
He laughs at kings and beggars alike,
strips both.Church bells toll for nobody; pews rot in the dim,
And the priests preach their sermons to specters and him.He rides the rails,
the ships, the trails where footsteps have worn,
Anointing every surface with sickness, each fabric torn.He’s the hush before fever,
the sweat-soaked cloth,
A legend written in pus, a gospel delivered in cough.
He is the history the city forgets until the beds are full,
A myth until the doctors panic,
until the numbers dull.Every nurse who stares through goggles,
every child whose skin grows pale,
Becomes a vessel for his whisper, a psalm for his tale.No flag repels him,
no border turns his path,
He strides over trenches, across empires collapsing in
wrath.Even the rats grow cautious, even the crows take flight,
When Pestilence enters the orchard, nothing survives the blight.
The archives fill with names erased in columns of grief,
Whole villages gone silent, each memory brief.He’s the hand in the lover’s hair,
the taste on the lips,
A stowaway in the marrow, a chill in the fingertips.The mothers pray over cradles
where children will never wake,
And gravediggers stack the silence, backs aching, hearts about to break.Flesh sags,
eyes hollow, breath shallow and thin—The veins
of decay running riot beneath the skin.
Ancient plague ships, black crosses painted on the doors,
Mass graves dug by moonlight, abandoned marketplaces,
shuttered stores.He’s in the air that trembles, the light that flickers gray,
In the piles of white bones where the dancers once held sway.No hero is coming,
no doctor with a cure,
The mask and the rosary dangle,
useless and impure.He is the echo of footsteps down endless, empty halls,
The slow scrape of fingernails against painted hospital walls.
He is not haste or fury—he is patience refined,
A lesson in mortality, a dark communion with time.He teaches with absence,
with the spaces that loss defines,
And all that’s left behind are abandoned shrines.The city learns silence,
the country forgets song,
Every meadow, every house, carries his poison along.He is ritual and recurrence,
the myth with a body count,
A chill that will linger, no matter how much they recount.
When he leaves, the quiet settles thick as dust on bone,
No footfalls, no laughter—just a kingdom overthrown.He leaves behind a new legend,
a lesson older than plague,
That death is a promise, and the sick will beg.The world sits hollow,
stunned in the aftermath,
Haunted by the memory of every fevered path.He fades,
but his mark is carved into the day—A legacy written in the veins of decay.