Avenging Angel

He used to breathe, a long time ago. Before he stood still, silent and unflinching before the vagaries of salty wind and tropical rains –the only breaths he drew being those of solid stone.

He loved once, a long long time ago. Another, just like him, whose wings were a pure, soft, luminous white. Wings he stroked beneath his trembling fingers, wings that roused such heartbreaking passions in him he could scarcely contain it.

He used to cry, but this was not that long ago. He cried when his beloved eagerly rose to meet him in the gentleness of the morning sun. Arms that encircled him came with the subtle swoosh of silky hair –so fair and so smooth it broke him when he saw it caked in blood.

He killed, just once, and this happened not long after he found those wings broken and bent in mockery of their love. He held the broken body in his arms, and keened his loss to the heavens, which abandoned him.

But now he stands at the entrance, forever set in stone. A punishment for the vengeance he wreaked.

Every year the people who mill around him swear they see tears rolling down the fading paint on his cheeks. Tears for the sins of man, they say.

They are wrong. The tears will be for the Heavens, for when the stone prison crumbles, he will kill just once more, and plunge the world into darkness.

The people are wrong, but by the time they know it, it will be too late anyway.




just a whim, and a fancy when I took this picture of a statue of an angel in Melaka, at the entrance of St Peter's church. Not a good piece, but I just wanted to write something other than life and studies here.