Enter again the sweet forest - any

[Pollock]

Enter again the sweet forest
     Enter the hot dream
       Come with us

Pretty, colourful things come to him. He sees them for what is on the inside—that’s just the kind of man he is. 

(Nothing about it is ever bird-delicate—it is always strong, hardy bones held together fast by flexible, giving tendons; cushioned by gummy cartilage—but with enough perseverance, it breaks all the same.)

They come to him lost things, all. They come to him in ghoulish nights, bereft of sleep; they come to him for abasement, absolution; they come to him looking for shepherding in the wastes. They come to him bowed low. Humbled.

Always so pretty.
Always so colourful.

(—sometimes, he finds something pure. Something untouched and smooth below the spires of ribby bones and knots of spine. He finds things that are innocent. Pink.

Usually they come to his spoilt by old hands, already. Rutted earth and bruised anima—they are riddled with holes but more often than not, their defenses are shored by the scar tissue that forms when the soft, pink places are intruded upon.

He knows this better than anyone.)

“Do I?” he allows her the cursory glance at his wing—many years ago that would have been an unfortunate transgression but now he is shameless, arrogant and he wears all his tatters and rags like gilded mantles and jewels. (Everything else goes deep, deep into the inside—most decidedly not pink or smooth—settled in the suck of mud by his dust crown and his milk teeth.) 
“I don’t think I have ever seen you in my life,” he wonders if it cuts deep—hopes, of course, that it draws against something papery and egotistical—but the void in him stares at the void in her and recognizes itself, scar tissue and all.

Crownless, indeed.

“I would remember.”

the gift-giver