Your truth and mine are double-edged swords— tides in different synchronicity They see lies in what the other bleeds for. They see the fault in the humming globe, the light in the wretched tunnel, a medley of falsehoods stitched together as virtuous delusion— one needs saving from. Yes, we differ Yet conviction is the same machete, forged from the same iron. And duress—the final heat— melts us into one It borders on obsession, this primal need to outwit the opposing pole, to be that altruistic mentor rescuing the misguided, bringing lost sheep home shedding light with a condescending wand, slick as royal parlance, in a melee won by elimination of the feeble, won by a riposte that rattles the ground Perhaps every crusade begins where existential insecurity first mistakes itself for charity We can be chimeric defects in the eyes of the furnace— abhorrent, insufferable, crooked from fencing, melting into a brook of crimson anarchy, hissing before it inundates the unaffiliated— the quay beneath a storm of swords Or we can lay down our capricious swords, let the water carry them away, turn the mirror toward ourselves before we turn it on another, and march toward Eureka, our tides at last stilling their fury.