Romans 1:3

[zealot]

Above the azure haze,
where the crown meets a maze of light,
little children sleep on beds of oak,
leaves browned by the summer sun
fly between shafts of light, raining
upon shattered dreams and sworn hopes,
and the little girl lying on the grass
with her heart in her teeth and
a blaze across her cheeks, her eyes
like the sun unclouded and her
laughter tolling across the green,
that glorious voice bounding across
the heavens, glittered with tyranny and
majesty, this little girl alls peacefully to sleep.

She is unaware, blisfully so, of sacrifice.
She dreams of golden stars and polished temples,
she fights off demons in her sleep.
The din and echo of mortality has
faded from her innocent face; she shouts joy.
The immortality blasted across the threads of hair,
chiseled upon her serendipitous nose; the etching
of time slowing in her silk-fed hands,
all of this she is unaware of the sacrifice.
Peace comes with a price; the falling of a
blade is heralded with gifts. Joy is not free.
When she wakes, the illusory world sways
before her eyes; filigrees of hair shield
the sun from her eyes. A bird calls out from a tree.