(Continues from Unfolded)

Light falls softly through the cruiser’s window.
A streetlight serenade plays for the slaves 
to the system staggering for their dough.
They grasp cups of steaming joe steps from graves.

Do they hear the dungeons calling their names?
Chained to jobs they hate, they’re flickering flames.

Shadows pass hunched against the wind and somewhere beyond the concrete and glass canyons of this city, a new day dawns. I watch the working stiffs in starched suits lurch toward their towers of greed. But the cruiser kept rolling.

Downtown rose up, and its buildings scraped the raw morning. My ride held his course ignoring the radio’s yammering. A lone tree broke up the gray lines of the street flashing past. Its greening branches waved in the wind declaring it was alive. I watched the tree’s stationary dance seeing the spirit move its limbs. To my eyes, it glowed with a vitality the cheerless morning lacked.

The cruiser cornered, and I lost sight of the tree, but the memory remained.  Was there a spirit moving the natural world? A glint of red dragged my eye back to the dagger in time to see a shadow slip across the blade wiping away the encrusted blood. If I’d had hair on the back of my neck, it would have stood up. What had I stumbled onto? Might this story damn me instead of saving me?

Find the earlier parts of this series here.

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For OctPoWRiMo, 31 poems in 31 days–all part of one story. Watch me do it.
All 31 prompts are pictured below.

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Love my writing? Pick up Curse Breaker: Enchanted today: 

After an enchanted tree abducts Sarn, he’s thrust into a mystery revolving around a double homicide. Can Sarn protect his son, keep his masters happy and help the dead boy haunting him?

Look inside to find out. Read the first 15 chapters for free.