We Are Partners: A Tragic Rime

This article is part of the Reading Time series.

This cretin's occupation, I now shudder to report
Was chasing Partners through the woods and hunting them for sport
For want of passive spectacle, they would get their kicks
By making Partners fight to death while using only sticks.

When earthbound combat failed to sate their bloody appetites,
They made these gladiators joust at terrifying heights.
Or sometimes, for jest, these unconscionable killers
Would leave Partners to fatal starve on massive wooden pillars.

They made us run a fiendish course til we were brutal tired
The eldest man among us quite inevitably expired
A strand of yellow tape would mark the spot of his last breath
Like a festive pastel ribbon on the sweet, sweet gift of death.

Our former austere corridor, we worked inside its rooms
Behold, alas, its current state, a rainbow-colored tomb
Within its walls, a huddled group, too weakened to resist
Won't someone send a hero, if heroes even still exist?

– Andrew "Garbage Day" Miller