Ruin

Out chasing kites and dragonets, loosing the track, jerking out of scrubs. getting clasped by the creepers of a tumbledown stone wall.

Shattered gargoyles on the ground. their eyes staring up on their pebble-drooling congeners and on moss grown sculptures.

Beheaded dismembered marble figures. corroded disembowelled marble humans.

Marble limbs sprawling. marble heads nuzzling. marble genitals gaping and heaving in the grass. marble fig leaves eroding on the compost heap.

Friezes on the walls where grotesque granite creatures revel. stone reptiles strangling stone gryphons. stone maggots consuming the struggling monsters.

Stealing through, you'd expect to find the skeletons of the sleeping beauty's wooers in the hedges and perhaps her spindle and the witch inside.

Inside rooms without walls. columns without ceilings to support. the capitals shedding dead acanthus leaves which descend in slow

Motion to become parts of the rustling on the floor.

Doors leading nowhere. stairs spiralling into open air. formerly secret passages now exposed, leading deeper into the woods.

In one of the rooms a pile of tiny bones and a pointed hat atop of a tiny skull staring into the corner.

Strange... it seems as this palace decayed so quickly as if someone wanted to get rid of it.

As if the entire host of seraphim gathered in zenith and wept it away with toxic tears.