by Nick Gisburne
A nightmare chokes the city with decay,
A heavy, hateful, slowly shifting shroud.
No medicine or magic turns away
The elemental evils of the cloud.
A fog to freeze the marrow, and the flesh,
To paralyse the soul, to grip the heart.
Polluted, plagued, its victims flail and thresh,
Their muscles, tendons, tissues, torn apart.
No mercy blunts the clutches of its curse;
The smoke, the sickness, keeps each corpse awake.
It feeds, on fear, on pain, precise, perverse,
Consuming every terror it can take.
It leaves a strange survivor, cold, alone,
A child, who did not fear what she was shown.
