Elanor

A short storylike poem inspired by Edgar Allen Poe.

Yes, this is a story I remember,

The darkest night in late December,

There was a man slumped in his chair,

His fingers laying cold and bare

Curled ‘round the rests, stiffened there,

His arms spread wide like birds midair.

His feet were planted on the floor,

Like his veins were roots sprawled to the door

With a window in it, a perfect view of

The rain and clouds masking the moon.

His face was tired, heavy were his eyes,

Where black sacs below them hung like spies.

Dark was the area beneath his skull

Where his eyebrows were, dim and dull,

To the top of his nose, where one would feel the bone,

A shadowed area, like the place he sat alone.

His lamp was brightly alight on the table to his left,

Where he left his right lens, its partner bereft.

His ceiling had been leaking for an hour or so,

And some drops dripped on his forehead; it didn’t bother him though.

They ran down to his cheek, to his neck, to his chest,

To the top of his waist where the water came to rest.

They ran down his face like the tears from before,

The tears he had shed for his once-love, Elanor.

They’d been married for years, twelve of them spent

With memories and happy times he’d wish to forget.

They had picnics outside and played games for hours,

They acted like children, something he wished “could be ours”.

The most well-known couple in the town the two lived,

But something had happened he could never forgive.

He came home early from work, an hour or two,

A thing that his wife wouldn’t expect him to do.

He knew he’d had many suspicions before,

But in hope for his wife he’d chosen to ignore.
Sometimes he’d smell a foul stench, or see drops of blood on the floor,

But how could he confront his poor wife, Elanor?

The time she’d spend, shoveling backyard,

But with no plants of her own, he could not discard

That lingering feeling, that fear, distrust,

But how could he feel that of the woman he loved?

Benefit of the doubt, the mistake he had made,
Dressing himself in lies, charades.

In the kitchen, she was kneeling to a body cut neat,

With cuts and incisions like a butcher to meat.

It disgusted him, the way she cut in a grid,

To stuff in a bucket and seal the lid.

The moment she saw him she stood in surprise,

He wanted to faint, but he steadied his eyes.

He felt…so broken, bamboozled, betrayed,

His wife? A killer? Was he even awake?

Without hesitation, he opened the drawer,

And before she could speak, he stabbed Elanor.
And the woman had fallen, right onto the floor,

Right then had been breathed the last breath in her core.

Next to her was her victim, cold and dismembered,

And the man took his life that night in December.