He blooms in the eclipse of despair and hangs among the psychic thorns in the island of isolation. His widowed mother has let a lecherous vine wind around her. Thoughts are cankered. No one brushes his behavior. Dark sunken silence. In the shade of gloom, he grows like a nettle in the societal sand, fertilized by the ma-compost. First published in Page & Swine. Reprinted in The Literary Hatchet. .