A Red Dawn

I.

You are born with your father’s eyes.

They are red, pure red, a bright and certain crimson;

fire and blood in the sky

as the sun smiles upon first light.

It was said this marked you.

Your sight entered the world under that colour,

and for a brief hour,

the man who sired you thinks to name you for the dawn.

II.

He does not.

You are born with your father’s eyes—

so he names you after himself.

He sees in you the promise of his own shadow,

so you are called by the black fortune

of those who suffer his hand.

You are a person split apart, cleaved down the middle,

forever two made from one, even if you crawled,

bloodied and stinking,

into the waiting hands of the gods.

He is simply evil and you are justly unlucky;

and together you form one monster.

III.

That colour will follow you.

It will stain your hands before they are calloused,

and it will linger in your dreams

ere you have learnt to dream.

And it will haunt you, as all omens do.

It will drip in a future gone to you now,

lining the path you are fated to walk;

for you know that even the gentle sun

shall not wash it from your skin.

IV.

You are born with your father’s eyes—

and you are wild war children.

This, you think, is what spares you.

Thou art like me, Evil says.

Pulled from the same bitter womb.

The heavens shall tremble at thy gaze,

and the earth groan beneath thy tread;

thou shalt harvest what I have sown.

And the shame comes swift, almost tender.

For what else could you be,

if not your Maker’s child?

V.

You had been bred for war,

your body a vessel a deity itself might covet.

So you are violent,

because violence is what shall keep you alive.

And if in the land of the dead

you might find your waiting proof—

that this is your purpose

and without it you are nothing—

then may your hellish fire cleanse you,

and life itself shudder at your hand.

VI.

Your eyes burn as Evil lovingly cradles your face.

The morning stains your cheeks

as ichor drips from your mouth.

You took this truth and bore it with your soul,

and with every quiet, soft, useless night,

you laid at the feet of the divine,

asking if the price you paid for

will all have been worth its make.

The colour will hold you in its putrid grip.

It will sit in your throat for all your days,

and it will pound in your chest

when you find what it is you need.

VII.

Evil laments that you were born a girl.

You will be powdered in white lead

as your hair is plucked high,

dressed in the silks once worn by his mother,

as her sisters smother you so.

You will be like them, and all the women before them.

And you will be raped, he says.

Men will take you for your red eyes

and breed you for their children;

they will spear you in the very field

where you swore your oath to him.

But you shake your head

and beat pale fists upon his chest,

as you scream at him that you are his daughter.

VIII.

Your father laughs at your defience,

for what is a girl-child’s word

against all the world’s appetite?

Yet still you bare your teeth,

just as dawn paints them bloody.

And you tell him:

If thou hast made me, then I am thine in every cruelty.

If I was born from evil, then evil I shall also be.

Let every man come,

for they will only meet themselves in me.

You will surpass them, and humble them,

in their fists first, and then perhaps their hearts,

and you will know rest

when they have all knelt at your feet.

Your foes mirror you more honestly

than any gilded reflection.

IX.

To sunrise you came into this life,

and to sunset you shall end it.

It is hate, everyone thinks, which you first feel.

You call it simply for what it was: a beginning.

Sacred in the right light,

and profane in the ignorant grammar of kinder folk.

X.

You are born with your father’s eyes—

and your body will always remember

what your heart wishes to forget.

You have the face of Evil: pale, fair, light, and soft.

Too bright and too smilin

as you shape yourself to what is demanded of you.

There are days you bite your own hand

to keep from crying out.

But still you grow lithe, and hardened,

and strong and beautiful all—

still childlike enough to comfort anyone

but too monstrous to ever be killed.

And you must be a monster:

for even at their worst, even your family was not that.

You are a child, yes,

and the most dangerous thing anyone will ever see.

How many lives you took, how much others you saved—

oh, does it matter now?

It makes no difference if it hurts.

You are doomed in this imitation,

and you must follow, as other monsters all had.

XI.

You are born with your father’s eyes—

but that does not deter men.

They come all the same:

first sons, second princes, third spares, fourth brothers;

and every other fool with a cock

who dares to wet his blades

and muddy his robes against yours.

They all come to you with both insult and reverence

so fervent it may as well be hunger.

Some seek to kill you, some to claim you;

they bid regard to Evil and commit sins in his name

if only for the chance

to brush their fingers across your holy skin.

XII.

Oh, but there are two

whose eyes do not flinch upon meeting yours.

One bears the same misfortune you do.

Fierce as winter and loyal to the death,

and arrogant enough to understand

that loving you is simply another way to bleed.

He calls you alive

when everyone else names you dangerous.

He sees war in you and reaches anyway,

thirsty for the wound itself.

He touches your face

in the manner Evil has kissed your brow,

and when he says your name,

you know that he is doomed to fail.

The other carries no fire,

but he has the cold precision of one

who trusts nothing

and believes even less.

He should fear you. He does not.

He should hate you. He tries.

But he watches you

the way the sages peel their eyes

for miracles he wishes were not real—

and you become, you think,

the shining star in his lonely nights.

One admires the way you moved;

another the way you struck;

and both the way you endured.

XIII.

Evil curses them both.

They will slay thee, your father says.

Loyalty is thy blood, and thy sworn enemy is Love.

Thou wert born with eyes like mine,

so I am the only one thou wilt gaze upon.

His hatred is sharp enough to strip you clean.

You are disciplined enough

to pretend you do not want to look upon him.

You feel contempt first, and fascination next,

and then a trembling, shameful weariness

you will never speak aloud,

you almost believe you are immune to his smile.

You are wrong, of course.

Evil is your father, so evil you shall also be.

XIV.

You are born with your father’s eyes—

and you are so very tired.

So you spend the last of your days laughing,

reckless, afoot;

starving for something you think

you will never truly understand.

You think you are as doomed as your lovers

and yet somehow that comforts you.

You are marked by Evil for you are his get

but you find it in yourself to be gentle.

He does not know

that you both are walking toward the same ending,

and you do not warn him.

The colour is all around you now:

in your eyes, in your hands,

on your lips, on your chest,

at your feet, at your blade;

you are a wild war child,

and there is naught else about you to hide.

Your father says:

Men love thee only in the way men destroy things.

And it is true,

for every promise your lovers give you

is another way for them to die.

No one can save you. Everyone wounds you.

You will wound them in turn.

And fate will swallow all four of you whole

long before it ever offers mercy.

XV.

I am thine, you swear to your father, on one ugly night.

It is the last of the black hours

before the sky breaks with first light.

You take his hands and kiss them bloody

as your leaden tears fall upon his palms.

I am thine, you repeat.

Evil thou art, evil I am.

Thou hast stained me in the eyes of the gods.

My hurt is thine, my smile is thine;

I am the monster thou didst begat. 

And if the world should love me,

then it shall perish for it.

XVI.

Evil laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

You do not flinch. Why should you?

His eyes are yours, his tears are yours;

this awful, judging, stinging, hateful shade;

like spindly flowers on forgotten graves.

This is he and me, you think.

This is what you are,

and what made you,

and what you would be;

and all the other lovely things

that had crowned you mighty.

Steel in your hands. Misfortune on your tongue.

XVII.

Dawn breaks.

And with it,

the sky burns red, red, red.

Your lovers’ hands reach for you, and you do not run.

When they swear

they will not let the world devour you,

you smile the way your father did

just before he broke your soul.

For the both of them—wildfire and winter-water—

are already halfway gone.

You are born with your father’s eyes,

and they will be the first thing they notice,

and the last thing either ever forget.

XVIII.

Your peace is ungranted.

It will be carved slowly and painfully,

long after your passing;

from the self you could have been

had you not chosen the harder path.

It is a choice made again and again

by those who understand exactly what it costs.

And you will be remembered

as a girl-child who died for it:

dead by the very violence you performed.

XIX.

You have killed your father,

and you have killed yourself too.

You have broken your lovers,

and you know for true

that your peace will protect nothing and no one.

Only power has absolved you.

The world will move on without you,

and your legend will grow beyond your control.

But the earth shall thank you,

as it always thanks its monsters.

XX.

You were born with your father’s eyes,

and you die beneath the kind light of the morning.