One Feared That He Mightn'T Find A Victim Poem by Quel Saige

She awakens in the night
He slyly slips through an unlocked window
She turns to her infant's sibilant slumbering,
wondering where the world will take them

He pauses to illuminate
the room in which he finds himself
in which, in some sense, he has always found himself

the moon watches

She caresses her child
He silently ascends the stairs
to the floor above

She, a lonely, lovely maiden
He, with many a burden laden
and the promise of a death entices him
if not that of another, his own

He approaches a second stair
She, no longer unaware,
is now awake, and hears a noise
she clutches at her infant

the moon watches

She steals softly from the bed,
child-in-arms,
light streaming through the windows
from distant Selene

He slinks about, unseen

the moon watches(doesn't it always
watch these things)

She searches for a disturbance
(was it the water heater? could be
one can never be too safe)

He comes to the uppermost floor

She finds an unlocked window
in her basement

He comes to the bedroom door
She locks the window,
gazing into the desert night
thinking, isn't phoenix pretty this time of year

He pauses, unsure
She carries her child back to bed, gently,
tenderly

He breathes deeply,
steels his will,
bursts into the room

She falls back asleep

He finds nothing but an empty bed

She rests peacefully

He stares onto the montana landscape,
cursing himself for
choosing to kill in the one place
no one lives

the moon watches

He never wanted to live anyway

One feared she might find evil near
Another sought to find it out

Perhaps each would, at some other moonlit time

But for now, the moon watched the maiden sleep
And watched the drained and broken man cry
into a dark and unmoved sky