by Nick Gisburne
She builds bizarre mechanicals, her fools,
To give them life, but strip their souls away.
Her cabinet of esoteric tools
Was taken from her mentor, dead, today.
Without the grit to listen, or to learn,
She saw a swift and simple shortcut: steal,
And, as she watched his broken body burn,
Compelled her first monstrosity to kneel.
She struggles, for in each of them the eyes
Remind her of his penetrating gaze.
As every failed creation lives, then dies,
The spirit of the man she murdered stays.
She sleeps, fatigued, but wakes again to gloat,
And finds his metal fingers at her throat.
