Red

a flower was offered to me,
brushing my fingers,
through unyielding prison bars,
against the putrid dark,
a flash of perfumed red ,
the wounded night was bleeding;

through tangled impossibilities,
we watched each other,
robed in cast iron silences,
shackled to our contradictions;
one eye the colour of feline hunger,
the other raw, trembling,
trapped like a gutter rat,
half predator, half prey;
we watched each other,
backs pressed against our walls of fear,
and that thing we tried to kill,
maimed and oozing,
marking time
in the far corner,
a morass of congealed red,
the bloodied night was crying;

a flower was offered to me,
daring my broken soul,
I let it fall through scalded fingers,
on stained obsidian shrouds,
shards of denied red,
a flower was offered to me
but the broken night was dying.

For Poets United where the midweek prompt is “A flower was offered to me”