The Rooms in the Ruins.
Up crooked paths, through towering trees,
Where the castle once stood and stands still,
Along the ivy covered corridors, ascending crumbling steps,
He entered the rooms in the ruins, between fallen turrets, where
Three ladies wait, with total indifference, for the end of the world,
No need to knock on the door — it has rotted away,
Into the first room, the bedchamber of countless dreams,
Where spiderwebb tapestries reach up to the stars,
The first lady shines like starlight in the fog,
She will hug him too tightly and get down on her knees,
“You must fetch things for me,” she tells him, “Things of no value,
Yet I will demand them… buttons, and lace, and tears,
And the ceaseless silence between the worlds.”
The second lady lies, catlike, on the bed,
Her breasts hanging lazily from her gown,
She waits for him to come to her,
He passes through to the next room, which is
Darkness, where the third lady has no need for a face,
Only impossibly long arms which reach from the shadows
And crimson hair that dangles down from the rafters,
He returns to the first of the rooms in the ruins.
P.S. Here, I experimented with a poetic-prose style. Not really a poem, not really a short story, just something in between. Not sure if I like. Normally I write fixed verse, rhyming poetry, but it’s good to try new things.