Marked like a wounded animal leaving bloodstains on snow, about to be flushed from a thicket toward a bloody end.

Left abandoned and scorned,
In a world no longer real,
No longer my own.

I lived my life my way and yet,
the choice to die my way..
has been stolen from me.

The cold, clawlike hands wrap around my throat, squeezing, suffocating the life from my body. Dizziness. Terror. Death.
My only control is to extend my neck to the guillotine, my silent rebellion nothing more than whispers in passing.
The only sound of defining silence of a future I will never have.

A single strand of hair allowed to escape from it's ribbon on this fateful day on which I’d learned of my death.

Yet I do not mourn,
For my pride is my own.

My dignity like a forest, you see, with thousands upon thousands of paths running through it, all branching off in different directions.

My heart will forever live on,
Even as my time runs short,
for the end is near.

When I finally reach the end,
And even if may have been unloved by some,
Abandoned and left alone by others,
Perhaps leaving nothing behind,
not even if my name is forever left unspoken.
Leaving behind nothing more than the disappearing of my ghost...
The heady fragrance of my soul will linger and draw blood from hidden thorns upon your flesh.
© Joleen