ANNOUNCEMENT: We’re currently running our first Kickstarter campaign in more than a decade, to fund Year 17 of Lightspeed and Year 15 of Nightmare. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/kickstarter to check it out. Funding the campaign will bring all-new stories to Lightspeed from the likes of Charlie Jane Anders, Travis Baldree, Olivie Blake, P. Djèlí Clark, Ken Liu, Hugh Howey, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, Veronica Roth, Jeff Vandermeer, and more. The campaign ends October 15, so back now!
CW: none.
a beast of shadow and swirling smoke
moon-stalker and mist-bane
all curling claws and clenched teeth
followed me through the night,
lapping at my strides
licking at my feet
I can feel it in my heart,
thrumming like echoes of thunder
sidling closer, closer.
it is my shadow-self,
all the evil that I have done
and still might do
I fall to my knees in blessed moonlight
hoping that the silver beams
of reflected sun
might purify me,
raze the evil from my soul
beg the night sky
to save me, forgive me,
redeem me—
my heart shudders
beneath my breastbone
leaping to uncertain life
and then the shadow closes in,
wrapping me tight in teeth and claws,
pushing in to where my soul might dwell—
it burns with cold,
and yet, part of me welcomes it
because when the shadow takes me
there is no more culpability
no more guilt
just the rending of flesh
the taste of blood
and the sweet certainty
that none of it was truly my doing.
Author’s note:
Back in 2021, I used to post prompts on Codex, a forum for pro and neo-pro writers, to encourage people to write poems on a weekly basis. I posted this image at that time, not knowing it came from a Gwent card: https://bit.ly/4gLzjgD. Not knowing the context, the poem came to me as a response solely to the image; and the question of culpability came to me. Would a werewolf feel relief at knowing that it’s the curse responsible, and not them?
