Leaving Town After The Battle, On My 20th Birthday

Her hand shimmered in the moonlight, a pearl tinged with jade reflections, fingers that were sharper than knifes, and on her pinky, a gold ring covered in slithering serpents of rubies. Her lips were slightly parted, but in the manner of one who no longer waits for her kisses, who no longer waits for any man. Her eyes were saphires, or maybe they simply reflected the pool in the garden, strewn with lillies, and it shocked me, to see the death of her hand immersed in the life of water; the flowers on her skin were like bouquets on a tomb-stone, she was so cold. Her hair had grown dry like straw, when once it had been the color of the sun's rays reflected off of sleeping trees. I held my lips to her tears that bled from her eyes like the crimson that seeps between a virgin's thighs. There were no words to say, and even the night had grown silent; the storm had chased all the birds from the garden, and the soldiers were busy raping in the brothels. My sword lay on my thigh, its hilt encrusted with emeralds and rubies that were brighter than her blood. I left her there, as the sun began to yawn out of the horizon, and the birds crept back into still-soaked branches, a monument to the life I had lost, before it had been begun.