Poetry class #2

Damsel in Distress

“Tis the breath of the Ice Dragon.”
she’d say, peering deep into the inscrutable fog.
“He’s come for me again.
He’s not found me yet, but  . . .”
“Really, Grammy?”

I only half believed her then,
well ~
 maybe a tad more than half,
      as I shivered in her arms
         wide-eyed in terrified delight.


A deep chuckle rumbling in her chest,
she’d light another candle and throw another log upon the fire.
“To ward the great wyrm”, she’d say all serious and severe.
   
Even now the memory of those words
sends a thrill through me
colder than that dragon’s scales.


“She must have wandered out in the night…we’ve searched, but. . .”
The convalescent stench coating every immitigable word.

I knew.
I knew when they showed me the note they found
crumpled in the chair beside the fog-soaked window that dreary March morning:

“He found me."


I blew out the candles and quenched the fire before I left.

There was no point now. 

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