Cock crow at midnight; a full moon spotlights a courtyard comrade, huddled, coughing, bleak. Why so glum, friend, so forlorn, so darkly pitted against yourself? His eyeholes seek surrounding mountains.
“My woe is not to share with you, and yet I’ll say what made me so.”
An earth-caked, uncorked wine confession falls short of sympathy.
Rumours spread that morn among the menfolk: “Avenge yourself!”
It hurts, adultery. But once the sinking feeling falls, the chest puffs out: “I will revenge this trespass!” he bellows. Yet to the large scale he distends, his sleeves are those of a man condemned to be himself.
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