“What is your name?”
I finally asked
on that cold
and hopeless morning,
as we stood
naked on the hilltop, knowing
we were irredeemable.
“Hyperion,” he said
“And I am Phoebus.”
We cast off those vibrant
lies, I baptised him
Cain, he branded
me Cassius, and we went
our separate ways.
I suckled on the fat
of life thenceforth, and looked
not once, back with
regret. There was no shame
or peculiarity in death,
yet I told
the Undertaker to carve
“Scorn us or envy us,
It matters not, we who bathed
In milk, but gave up
The sun”
Finnbar Howell is a writer, poet and engineer from Wicklow, Ireland. He writes both literary and speculative fiction and poetry, and has a smattering of publications over the last decade. After climate change and the rise of modern fascism, the thing that bothers him most is the homogenisation of culture globally.