Today, I overhead
a young man tell a woman,
“I am a wizard.”
Hmm. Perhaps,
he is the wizard
of la boulangerie.
Then I heard the young man say,
“I see fairy doors everywhere.”
He explained in great detail
the flaws and foibles of the fey.
That’s when I knew he was insane.
One doesn’t understand
moss coiling on stone,
or ivy’s random holding
of rusted fence risers.
One doesn’t understand
water’s deep gouging
of helpless stone faces,
or an echo’s insistence
to remain in the saddest
of lonely places.
No mere man can fathom
farther things, plunged
into silent, damp caves,
than his mind can reach.
But, he reached
into a hole. Clutching
at madness and chaos;
if he could merely hold
these things in his hands,
he could force them
into molds.
He squeezed his hands into fists.
The force of which
pushed madness
into his skin
and into him.
These things ate away at his brain
and made a burrow, a mound, a gate.
They made him insane.
Paused,
he stared through the window,
and I wondered what he saw,
mouth agape, he didn’t realize
that a man’s hubris often angers
a queen. Her talons, I’ve seen
and felt, but I surrendered.
Braggadocious, through the back
of his head and out his mouth,
roiling hordes scream.
The flow, of which,
raging, torrential,
holds open this
one true fairy door,
and the words become
terrible rivers,
born of curious, trickling streams.
©️ Tenpenny, 2025.