“You are a worm through time The thundersong distorts you Happiness comes White pearls, but yellow. . .” Folding in upon itself Folding out atop the world Halls expand beyond themselves A labyrinth from the stars to the Earth Reaching out, we sought so long The Oldest House called to us Illness drenched into these walls Voices pushed inside of us Suspended souls lost to the breach The hissing red forced in Just as we can feel them getting close So too can they know that we are near A throbbing pool of crimson deep A shape of black against the white Altered worlds and artifacts Line the roads to the hissing red The Oldest House contains them all A place to breach into the universe Anointed a throne, director of the house We see through a thousand veils Vermillion flood pooling on the white The colors beg desperately for us The Oldest House shakes and cries Pushing against, pulling me in We navigate the stars, we navigate the rock Soar through pillars below the earth Moving through sands of space Arriving on a different shore Hallways still folding towards me The Oldest House has always been Standing atop the shifting walls Moving between the folding halls Colors spread and begin to thin I remain with us to the end “This is Dr. Casper Darling I have a classified message for the director of the federal bureau of CONTROL I have sad news. . .Hedron is gone now. . .” I remain with us to the end

Two lonely souls tethered by pain A lie and betrayal, a death Possessed by the dead seeking revenge Desperate to know—afraid to learn Abandoned on the island of amber Six notes in a lonely church Lost words of the four who are one God is four, do not trust the whispers Sky of red, a land of red Empty structures without purpose A sphere of black hung in the sky Buildings slaughter not knowing why Burning rain ignites the skin Falling forever in thorned woods More empty halls and more empty rooms Built to be abandoned The wind of another planet touches my skin A drifting rock among the stars—a voice above the water “The music machine will play sonatas Terrible upon your body For they are four; for they are one And your paintings stains—your music noise” “Experimenting in defiance of God Angels determined to understand You do not believe in hell So you will not believe where you are” Two souls tethered by pain A lie forgiven—betrayal eased Two souls who just had to survive Now they must kill the children of God The wind from another planet touches my skin On this island we forget our loneliness The wind from another planet touches my skin On this island we forgave our sins

We have rehearsed our hate; practiced our violence We have studied our pain; repeated our trauma We have neglected love; emotional abstention Let fester pulsing wounds growing on our skin We would endure hell just for the slightest chance To feel closure, to feel something else The tears do not help and time is too slow We cannot wait for these wounds to heal The time between stars is insignificant Against the time for the hurt to wane No silence greater than the enraging howl In the space between trauma We have rehearsed our hate; practiced our violence We have studied our pain and repeated our trauma Look at each other and see a mirror Loathe the image reflected back to us Seeing red Breathing red Eating red Breeding red So tired of the throbbing pain Begging for any release Exhaustion that hurts—sleep without rest Our eyes never stay shut Across the earth and in the trails of blood We circle each other smelling the scent The scent of our hate, the stench of our lust The end of our pain, the end of our hunt Seeing red Breathing red Eating red Breeding red Crying in red Mourning in red Drowning in red Nothing but red All that we see and all that we feel Blood rolls down our skin Such expansive shame Incredibly vast our guilt We’ve auditioned this moment For the day our bodies enact it Muscles trained well to take and take and take There should be no hesitation Do we deserve this, deserve this ache Have we earned this, this longing pain Despite the shame, in spite of the harm We demand justice for things we would have done Despite knowing why, in spite of seeing clear We hate what we see because we see ourselves And still we fight though we are much the same A bulwark of guilt built with shaking hands Through tears and screams, we lament what we lost Losing much faster than we could ever heal We cannot suffer this pain forever Taking breaths of blood underwater We’ve violated much, so what’s a little more We’ve hurt them so much, so what’s a little more We cannot wait for these wounds to heal We must learn to live with what we have done We cannot forgive, but maybe we can accept We must learn to live with what we have done