To glory in self like a new monster - any.

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He is a little like carrion.

Mangled and abandoned roadside; picked at by scavenger birds till bone-bare. A dead thing (as good as), wearing the cloth of putrescence like a jester's motley. A great joke; a damaged parody of his mother, and a prank from god — laughter and mockery come from all sides to beat him like fists, bruising the soft places of his psyche. Forcing from the undersides of his young body the brilliance of youthful prospect.

A little golden boy, born to a bronze bitch, with a little, lonely wing. Pollock had been teased with the impossibility of flight, but he was not just humbled by the incomplete couple, but also by the twisted and broken nature of his one and only — fractured in a hundred different places down his humerus, ulna and radius. And by the derision that animated words like slaps across his face. He has been defective from birth.

Or was.

He carries these wounds like reminders, hot intimations of the dispirited boy he had been. And of the loathing and self-pity that still boils beneath like wicked demons. The stallion reads them like a prayer, mouthing the words into the air with squalls of snow and white breath, “A little. Broken. Boy.” Spittle gathers on his lip, and he laughs, shifting in and out of translucency. Becoming flesh in cold light, and then nothing. Mighty nothing. With every phase he grows egomaniacal, blood rushing to his muscles in preparation. He is more than whole! Overnight, a godlier incarnation of himself — refashioned by some queer, northern dream-magic.

He passes through the dense forest with quiet, unnatural speed; leaving strange, two-toed prints behind — and the snake-belly drag of his wing alongside. He finds a snowy hold (grey and cold, but clear and quiet) and runs the long curve of a horn down the frozen skin of a nearby tree, not yet accustomed to their burden. He tenses his muscles, feeling their new found capabilities quivering underneath his golden skin. On his left the unmovable, dirty wing flops and twists sickeningly as he moves over swells of snow, testing the dexterity of his footholds.

In his chest, he feels the thrum of something dark — something he feels he knows by touch, but cannot comprehend, or remember. Something singular in its capacity for malevolence. But he holds it dear, clutching it to his breast like a wild-eyed urchin holds a stale end of bread. It is as essential as nourishment to him, now.

Let something come to him this time.


Pollock,
The gift-giver.