{"sf1_id":1746779,"sf2_id":"YnLNMxeL","title":"Saturday, Dedicated to the God of Cycles of Violence and Revenge who Devours His Children, but Also of Harvest and the Lost Golden Age","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":354,"posted_at":"2021-07-31T04:47:00.000Z","tags":["Arches","Ballade","Fanfiction","Gay","M/M","Otter","Poetry","The smoke room","Wolf","chase","echo","leo"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1746779-saturday-dedicated-to-the-god-of-cycles-of-violence-and-revenge-who-devours-his-children-but-also-of-harvest-and-the-lost-golden-age","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/YnLNMxeL","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/49/b5/49b5c472-b3cc-4173-ae20-d2c9e0aac830","description":"#43 of poetry\n\nThis is based on a hypothetical possible aftermath of Arches and assuming that story, at some point, involves the laying to rest of all the Ghosts of Echo, in which Chase and Leo, each now much older, each still alone, but now each freed of their respective burdens both psychological and metaphysical, meet again, somewhere, doesn't matter where, and decide there's no reason not to try again.\nWhich, you might have been able to conclude from the actual text, but there's no harm in being clear.\nAlso about the subversion of the idea of recurrence from 'being doomed to repeat history' to 'getting the chance to relive the parts of history that are worth repeating.'\n[Marked Adult for being inspired by materials whose creators have repeatedly and unequivocally said are not for anyone under 18.]","content":"I return, once again.\u0026nbsp;I'll\u0026nbsp;run again.\n\nIt doesn't matter. Where is there to go?\n\nGuilty I am, and guilty I have been.\n\nThough in that town of secrets, who's to know?\n\nBut no road leads me out from your shadow,\n\nMy wolf, my lonely wolf, my more than friend\n\nWhen your arms were around me, long ago.\n\nI move in circles, back where I begin.\n\n  \n\nOur roads have forked beyond imagining.\n\nOur routes have long diverged. And it is well.\n\nOur love, though love indeed, was tragedy,\n\nOur happy ever after lived in hell.\n\nYet still when distant desert wind I smell\n\nIt conjures up your face to me again.\n\nAnd I remember. Or perhaps foretell.\n\nI move in circles, back where I begin.\n\n  \n\nI've long since cut the anchor you could not.\n\nI've long since fled the ruins where you haunt.\n\nAnd roads to other loves I found, I thought.\n\nThey proved dead ends. They proved not what I want.\n\nI walk my only path, as nonchalant\n\nAs I can be. My fur is growing thin.\n\nMy image in the mirror grows red and gaunt.\n\nI move in circles, back where I begin.\n\n  \n\nBut now the wind is changing. Now the dark\n\nIs not so filled with spiders, nor so black.\n\nI find cool shadows overhead: the arc\n\nOf some stone arch, sweet shelter in the crack.\n\nI dream at night of men, at an old shack,\n\nWaiting in welcome, for a long lost friend\n\nWho now may join them, now may have them back.\n\nHe moves in circles, back where he begins.\n\n  \n\nFor every day, hysterias die down.\n\nFor every day, another ghost has passed.\n\nEchoes fall silent, even in this town.\n\nThe smoke begins to clear, at weary last.\n\nAnd voices in my head are fading fast,\n\nFor even ghost towns crumble, in the end.\n\nIf ghosts may rest in peace, we too can ask\n\nTo move in circles, back where we begin.\n\n  \n\nMi Principe, we are on separate routes.\n\nIf mine is proving cyclical, why then\n\nWith yours I'll intersect, I have no doubt.\n\nWe move\u0026nbsp;in circles, back where we begin.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1743272-portrait-of-a-lonely-wolf.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1757684-blank-verse-essay-on-the-treachery-of-hope.json"}}