Can you tell I'm not working on any of the fic I mean to?

[quinara]

So, apparently I think Wesley wrote a sestina about Lilah, at some point between A3 and A4. [Gang, I managed to write a sestina!! It's never worked before!]

PG for some slightly gory imagery, no particular warnings, though there is some pretty hefty appropriation of Christian ideas, mainly in the title and first verse. And, also, I should say that I've let my iambs run quite freely...

If God is Love, then You are False.

Your face to me is like a graven image:
A set of curves I should not treasure,
Sharp bones that have articulated many times
Your wish to see my old friends dead.
Yet when you laugh I cannot look away
And all I’ve left’s the idol that is you.

I don’t know what I mean to you.
Perhaps you wish to make me in your image
And work on me until you’ve carved away
All that I was and left your lust for treasure.
I know you want all I was dead,
Because of course you’ve told me many times.

Oh, God, I’ve seen your skin so many times
(Clean planes that, Lilah, don’t become you).
No matter if I dream you’re dead
I cannot shake the smiling image
I’ve locked in my mind, a treasure
I’m ashamed of, hidden deep away.

I think I wish you’d go away –
I’ve told you so uncounted times.
But like a jackdaw with her treasure,
You won’t let me get that far from you.
Why, when you distort me to a mirror image,
Whole not broken, live not dead?

It’s not been long since I was left for dead.
If all my body’s blood had bled away,
Would that dry corpse have painted true an image
Of my life? The memories fill my dreams sometimes;
I wake up dying in your arms. Why is it you
Alone who treats my life like some strange treasure?

For after all that is the truth of treasure:
You only find it after someone’s dead.
How many people died so you
And I could sculpt this thing between us, chip away
The burrs and then make prayer ten times
Too few ‘fore heresy’s bright image?

However many, it’s this image that I’ll treasure,
Recall a thousand times till one of us is dead,
When torn away I’ll finally be free of you.

Comments

[stultiloquentia]

You wrote a sestina! A Wesley-and-Lilah sestina!!! Wow wow wow. What a perfect choice of form for this relationship, and what amazing execution.

I love the "image" theme, which emphasizes, for me, the brittleness and chill of their relationship as well as its deadness, its inability to change, grow, be warm and green and pliant. They are static. Hah, and that's literally how Lilah ends up, isn't it? She dies, and then is forced to live in her own unchanging image at the moment of her death forever after.

If all my body’s blood had bled away,
Would that dry corpse have painted true an image
Of my life? The memories fill my dreams sometimes;
I wake up dying in your arms.

I love this bit, especially the last line's multiple interpretations, including the sexual pun.

The characterization of Lilah as a jackdaw with a treasure is wonderful.

[quinara]

*gobbles up shiny feedback* Thank you! :) It's absolutely typical - I've tried several Spuffy sestinas, but they've never got anywhere; with Wesley and Lilah it just seems to work so much better. I suppose it is because, like you say, they never really get anywhere, no matter what they do.

And you like my favourite bit! <3