Twisted beneath the heel of the blade was his sinister laugh radiating off the perfect shred the blade carried. His reflection stained on my mind, the six inch steel into the root of her abdomen.

_'The last thing I have.' _Those words slipping, giving him just enough power on the tip of his tongue. The same taste of a hollowed tree trunk, full of winters meal and swiped by natures prey.

Both called Death by its name. Death had blood on his hands and he loved it with every fiber of his being. His hands screamed unworldly dividends. All she did, was scream in silence. Due to the nature of shock, her ability to speak was stripped from her.

In a shallow pit of agony, her pale, limp cadaver lying against some random torn down tree—torn between living another decade or stripping itself of Earth's natural course.

Death called her by her last name, Winter, and in that season as the warm heart she carried softened and turned to ice, did Spring finally open it's arms early this year.

The willow was her alter. Except she had to vow to herself that of the life she lived, she lived enough—versus the life she was to live.

Born as her own spiritual animal, and with her alter I let his last laugh snap over the flat surface.

The bellow of my stomach usually full of hunger, finally feels satisfied. Though the loss can never be replaced by lex talionis.

The willow shall live another decade, for it's unwillingness has been filled with blood, tears, and forgiveness.

But no tear shall halt into earth's roots until the line has been severed.

A blade with no tallies, is no blade worthy of scripture.