The Demon Who Blushed

"It has been," he said,
"some time since I
made my way up there.
Does that seem right?"

The angel (fallen) paused
to consider...
"What demon," he said,
"makes not his presence known?

"What demon does not disturb
the earth? What demon,
by his negligence,
allows the human race some peace?

"Leave the hiding places
to the bean-sidhe and
the will'-o'-wisps.
Tonight, I fly."

Then, wings spread
(feathers molting),
he left his country behind.

On earth, the malefactor
turned this way and that,
watching the parade of flesh
below him.

"What pain can I cause,"
he said, "what darkness might
I bring tonight?" He rubbed his
hands together in Ovidian glee.

"In a heart, I'll
cause evil to be found
where before, there was none."
He chose his target and swooped down.

The demon pushed his way past
the skin, the hair, the blood, the bone
and penetrated to the heart,
entering in.

The demon almost drowned.
The sin of the heart was so vast.
On instinct, he tried to fly away,
but the heart was like an ocean

of sticky oil, coating the demon's feathers.
Such thoughts he saw there
in that mind, the likes of which
Hell had never heard of.

Faced, then, here at the turn
with sin so shameful
he could not have imagined it,
the demon blushed.

But the heart was so dark,
no one could have noticed.