I reached out to the end of it all
and saw a vision of my own fall.
 
Mephistopheles walked me
until I got jittery, and
ran fast as he could
soon as I did.
Each day thereon,
I resented my being with
him and his pack.
But in all that time,
he had mine
and I had
his back.
If it was all play,
he wasn’t anywhere
near dropping his act.
 
And so, I lived on.
 
I had no other calling.
I could only wait to see
my own self falling.
I could do nothing else.
The mind rode only on the
past and present of oneself.
And I continued to
draw on that very line
 
and kept on living,
 
Thinning that line,
Killing what’s mine,
Cutting down time
to the day I had
once seen
 
and living it had begun.
 
I got on the same track.
They were all with me,
him and his pack, his shadows.
And they took me to the same place
I had once envisioned as my altar,
 
but their ritual never began.
 
The act went on too long to be a sham.
I shook his and he shook my hand.
The day ended with
every step to and away
from the altar being
what I lived to see then.
I didn’t know whether I had
gained or lost a friend.
And the vision came to me
every now and then,
but nothing happened.
 
Until he walked me right up to the altar
once again.