The text, because it’s long and comes out tiny:

(The Queen of Carthage, cycle 12, after the War)

He came back from the War
empty-eyed,
broken
(they were all of them broken,
their sect,
like Orlande’s body
at the bottom of the reactor),
banned from Engineering,
good for naught
but cutting hair.
As she, working
in the Kitchens
during the Hard Times
(Biohusbandry and Hydroponics
signed on headlong
with the losing side,
lost people, files
stock,
seedlings, notes–
because farming is easy
right?
Well, they found out,
everyone living on
root veg and
rats, maybe a cat),
remembered the Barber
from before;
beautiful zealot’s eyes
(even lovelier than
their Orlande’s
as he fell
and crumpled,
no zealot now,
just blood and meat).
They think him broken
and he is
but she filled up his eyes again
with colder things
than ideals
and filled the bellies of the ones
who broke him
with the meat
that will break them.

poem by me.  This is one of the Sweeney Todd AU poems.  It’s set on the same generation ship, but later than the Ophelia poem on my blog.

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