Gilgamesh to Enkidu…

You were a storm wrapped in bone and skin,

Blowing away the darkness out of my soul,

You, man of moss and mountain baptised me with your talk of waterholes and rivers,

Your pretty language of streams eroded away the trait of tyranny from my divine specked blood,

Replacing it with a dangerous desire for you, with your honey-tongued words and soft as steel skin,

You taught me to fight the real monsters to avoid the ones in my head,

‘Kill Humbaba to defeat hubris,’

You said as the sunlight set your skin aglow,

You looked like a god of the wild, cloaked in a holiness I could not resist,

So I grabbed my sword and bow for you and not for Uruk,

Because you meant more to me than empires of mud-brick and sand,

With your skin, the hue of stardust and your hands longing for blood,

Yes, you were my Ishtar in male form with a mind made for war,

For you, I would face the gods wrath with a smile,

For you, I would visit the land of ghosts and ghouls,

With my grief as dangerous as any blade,

Death stole you from me, leaving a cold corpse for a companion,

Perhaps, Death saw your otherworldly essence in the shadows and sought you for its consort,

You always had a way of taming powerful and stygian souls like my own,

Breaking the brutality like branches,

So that a gentler plant may grow in its place,

No, my man of woodland, you are no longer here to quench the forest fires in my blood,

So I will seethe and smoulder over your soul being stolen,

Death can only be conquered by immortality,

Thus, I will seek the full stop to life’s finality,

In revenge for you,

My brave, brutal and beloved Enkidu.

Written by Sophie Bea Louise Overton

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