My mother holds me aloft
Beneath, a foaming sea of rabid maws
Ice-cold garrets
Fetid basements
Suppurating gutters
In the bloated heart of the city I love

The plunge, the toss, the fall
The endless careening into that great sweet Dark
And here I'm sucking the juices from sour apples
And here I'm sucking the venom from my nightly wounds
And here I'm sucking attention out of a dead-eyed boy with skin like library vellum

I swirl, a mote of alabaster and kohl
Amid the putrid rainbow of the Quarter
I catch fleas from dogs for warmth
Who catch fleas from cats for meat
Who catch fleas from rats for sport
Who catch fleas for the glory of fleas alone

I reach up my hand, but she doesn't take it
Wraps her own about mine
Crushes it into a fist

I raise it towards the Twilit, Moon-haunted heavens
And I scream myself sore describing all my wilted dreams
And I spit in its eye not because I can defeat the Night
But because I was raised to never gently go into it

So I spit my mouth
Bawl my eyes
Wring my heart
Dry

And smile against the burning dawn
As my mother holds me aloft

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Sarapin, in the year 964 AF.