Haunted Halo

By Kristie Patterson

You held out until the fall. You understood that to disappear in the months of such life beforehand would have had dire effects, and you didn’t want the burden of realizing you’d been taken for granted to crush the ones you had to leave. Upon your shoulders, you carried the most powerful of beings even though they killed you quicker – you figured you’d best go out with a bang, meet the force of vitality with your death rattle echoing a battle cry. Tall and mighty before the waters and the others and the destruction of your predecessors, you stood for decades… oh, the things you must have seen. Birth seasonally descended in your arms, and you welcomed its promise; nonetheless, you couldn’t hide the fateful pallor of illness that befell your peeling skin. Cradling the ball of fire in the sky, your holiness took final shape- refusing to burn, you’d do this your way. And you waited for the grey, for the rest to fade away… so reliable as clockwork, the world died around you for the last time. You held out until the fall – and one morning, you had gone. To have strength never meant one was strong. 

Kristie Patterson is a 24-year-old Canadian writer. She is currently doing her Master's in Creative Writing at Cambridge University, England, where she specializes in poetry.