Author's note: This was written for the November Teitho! prompt "Sacrifice." The formatting in two of the lines is incorrect due to inability to indent in FF docs.

For Aragorn, After the War

I want to slip into the hollow base
of an old tree and melt into its heartwood,

for my own heart has fled me,

caught in the mouth of a gull
like the silver needles I have seen

ripped from those waters.

I wonder if that is how I looked
when I first lost myself?

Flimsy as bait and wriggling?
Gasping for breath and then gone?

I have smelt nothing since but salt.

It kisses tart and burns my skin
when I sweat, or cry—

I am blending into light.

I am a cacophonous song to undo the world,
so loud I cannot hear, the way I imagine drowning.

Aragorn, make me breathe so deeply
that the only thing left of me is Wood:

the hum of cicada,

moths stilled in dew at dawn,

the first fawn spotted among Spring's first ferns…

Can you give me back that home?
Or make for me a new one?

For this old heart is too tired

to keep my head above water,
and, here, the sun is a thousand mithril scales

that cut more with each wave.

I am soft and I am beached, Aragorn,
raw from my love of this place:

it is for all of that, and you,

that I have given
my heart.

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