Lining the reverse of a canvas with black
gosammer, the kind mystics wear as veils,
may reveal darkness when the surface is slashed.

But what good are shadows splaying outward
and folding in like feathers, when silhouettes
only vaguely resemble wings. Art's delicate

fingers should be cut often in its weaving.
The drops of blood make the painted sky
shimmer like a shifting aurora, the enemies'

shadows wavering on the wall into lovers,
the thin possibility of this being real
formed into elegant plumes capable of flight.

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Valnuary, in the year 606 AF.