Confinement

The rope around her neck pulled taut like the one around her youth

And every once-beloved misled their sight, in horrified untruth

With a torch behind his back, he feigned paternal consolation

No father would let a child have a life like this, so he’d insist she have none

“Now, hold your breath, Scarlet

Drink not in these burning currents

Stay your lungs here, where the sharks prowl.”

A drip of red innocence thins in the black of a merciless sea

“Just you hold your breath, Scarlet.

You’re too good for this world.”

Drowning deceit in flames, confined

Death is now the only mercy on which she relies

The sky is spinning, not too much longer now

What a welcome release from this world to shut her eyes and never have to see through them again...

I see you’ve washed ashen guilt from your hands to indulge in applause,

Without a dry eye for your victim or a selfless pause

So even if you can’t, I see you for what you are:

Griever, seer, fiend, you've lost yourself in the char

Hell’s no escape from her pursuit

Until vengeance carves her stillborn heart anew

From within me she imbues,

Eager to breathe in, at long last, the scent of the blood of a father she thought she knew...

“Still, may this reckoning forgive.

And so, forever shall you live…

For, true suffering needs neither fire nor flood.

Eternally, will consequence be your ever-living Hell.

And when I’m dead and gone, only the blackest of depths will remember your name.

But when sanity abandons you, mine is the only word your broken mind will think to say:

...Scarlet”

You're too good for this world.