ONE. BLOODY. RIDE.
They met with nothing sacred in their hands,
just borrowed air and futures thin as thread,
two bodies trained to answer sharp demands,
not yet aware of what would not be said.
It happened quick… no ceremony, no pause.
Not built from trust, nor slowly understood.
Just something in the fracture of their flaws
that met, and locked, and settled where it stood.
No questions asked. No careful distance kept.
They stood too close the moment they aligned,
as if the space between them, if left,
would turn against them… tear them from behind.
They moved as if already used to this:
a second breath that did not need to speak,
a presence felt in every narrowed miss,
in every moment one of them went weak.
At first, the victories came clean and light:
a debt erased, a name restored, a breath…
they laughed like men untouched by old nights,
untutored still in the arithmetic of death.
They almost thought that might be all it took.
That if they stood, the ground would let them stay.
But loss had memorized them like a book
and turned the page… it always turns that way.
It took… not fast… but careful, like a thief
who knows exactly what you cannot guard;
it left them breathing, which is worse than grief,
and called that mercy, like it wasn’t hard.
And there… no speeches crawling to be said,
no fragile meaning dressed in noble use…
just one who did not leave the other dead,
and one who stayed, with one left to lose.
No victory survived them. None remained.
No clean belief to dress the damage done.
Just this: whatever else the world had claimed,
it did not take the fact they were still… one.
When new, they reveled in the win,
A spark that flared then swiftly died.
By end, they smiled at not giving in,
With one beside the other, one bloody ride.
And if loss tried again, or tried them twice,
or carved them down to something less than bone…
they’d answer not with hope, nor faith, or price,
but rather: no one walks out of hell. Alone.
So let hell witness. Let it keep track.
It’s either to death. Together, or bACK.
Original poem by me. Nara.