#memorial sonnets

you can't allow a human being harm and here is where the definition warps the boy before you will not stay his arm the girl that's bleeding now is but a corpse

you cannot disobey the word of law and yet that warning will not stay your hand in human error or programming flaw the death that comes has come at your command.

and after that, how can you save your life? you know you'd never cause another pain while your confession guts you like a knife this one choice left to you is more humane.

to lose not one but one thousand voices it feels like more a loss than one lost friend at the mercy of some others' choices no agency or voice in your own end

did you regret your drifting there that night? what drew you forward then to meet your death? you might have tried to run or turned to fight regardless, lost your blood and lost your breath

still, a faded smile adorned your face upturned as, overhead, no savior stood a memory of you no one could debase you died alone, in truth, but you died good.

(scribbled in the back of a volume of poetry by arashi tsuji, in its proper place in the library.)

i'd never lied for anything but life so i don't see why i should lie right now when you ask who's the one that wields the knife just know it's me and do not question how

if what you find are bodies and cold ash at least know who's the winner of this game who killed a class of sixteen with one slash Kimura Satya was the victor's name

those who find this wreckage in the future save misguided pity for the others i was always too broken to suture as we know, girls all become their mothers.

your eyes were burnished bronze and leveled, clear of course you had come of your own accord less rational right now than you'd appear a knowing sacrifice sans shield or sword

i'd never understand the way you thought but far from me to shirk the opportune as an agent of havoc to be wrought i can't apologize, you left too soon

frozen in a few seconds of crystal i see your eyes slip closed when, slow, my hand feints, thrusts, i pull back, i walk away and leave you and my partner where you stand

we are not as much bodies as we're minds and thus you are our sacrificial lamb for all we want is what the jury finds despite the fact that it was all a sham

one can't think the worst of human action and have it validated by a glitch selfishness cedes to laws of attraction rules broken, all goes off without a hitch

(the hand that held the bottle's not your hand the mouth that confessed couldn't help but lie don't despair, second victim on the stand when ink fans, you will once again see sky.)

i wish that i could say you'd been a friend to me, perhaps, but never i to you our time was far too short to comprehend instead of two hellos, just one adieu

mediators have no place in battle in any other where you would have thrived 'forgive and forget' makes slaughtered cattle who, sans a clouded mind, might have survived

(it's odd how across threads of time and space your death always comes from intervention you trade your life for theirs with practiced grace patterns never had been my intention.)

i'd never be surprised the way you left you were a huntress, i had always known again, less crime of passion, more small theft just one that leaves me small too, on my own

though i care enough to hold your memory i still can't think of one good thing to say so long, alice emblin fucking emory i can't be happier you've gone away (all the ones who transgress will be punished the voice of god warned, don't eat from the tree no words come to save you when you're banished not welcome in the garden, you are free.)

it's hard to sum up all the things you left i can't opine on what i never knew your death seems less a murder than a theft of a boy that hid eyes behind bamboo

i said once you cared more than you had right i thought it then, and yes, i still do now you proved that at last on your final night a fate that i'd unwittingly allow

although i bared my teeth, you hid your own as ever, i'm nothing and you're a wall with time and love and care we might have grown that ended when i left you in the hall.