Miasma

Chapter 1

Please Read: Just a small reminder that this is Book 2:  please see the first book 'Nepenthe', for the beginning of this work. Thank you :)
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My love was a shipwreck deep under the sea,

a silent and watery prison for me.

With corners so silent and robes full of death,

and lips that could capture my every breath.

Fingers that groped quite like long strands of kelp,

dragging me down when I begged them for help.

A body as pale as a skeleton sunk,

wrapping me up in a tidewater trunk.

Dragging my tongue across decks made of night,
tangled in rigging that delayed my flight.

Dredging for anchors that didn't exist,

never quite knowing to cease and desist.

The crow's nest held views eternally blank.

Eyeglass-horizons so cloudy and dank.

Ghost-hunting sails without wind from afar,

with watery eyes staring up at the stars.

Drinking deep of a poison more potent than rum;

sobbing for gallows that just wouldn't come.

Walking on sandbars with no relative end,

fantastical promises just 'round the bend.

Screaming out into trenches as deep as the earth.

Discovering death when I wanted birth.

A face utterly haunting could drag me deep down;

singing like sirens with intent to drown.

Looking for answers in crypts borne from lies,

rubbing out stains with exhausted eyes.

My love gave me depths that I cannot escape.

A relative dark, and consensual rape.

And then they sunk down to where I couldn't reach,

so I swam to the shore and died right on the beach.

Eight months.

That's how long it had been. Standing inside the broken, shattered skeleton of Fort Condor, Genesis tried to concentrate on the task assigned to him. He'd only been off of suspension for a little over a month and he was already bored. That was to be expected. Ferrying samples discarded by dying SOLDIERs and gathering up the last of the transmission sequences was dull work, but it was the only work he'd had in weeks. The flight there had been long and tedious. Up to his neck in surveillance, the redhead didn't dare put a single toe out of line. Administration was adamant that his continued place as Shinra's Finest was tenuous. The people loved him, so they endured, but that 'benevolence' only extended so far. He had a curfew, a round-the-clock guard, and a constant shadow. Going to the bathroom in HQ required an escort and the paperwork that went across his desk was grunt work; nothing official...nothing interesting.