Keep the Faith

He lays in the middle of the deserts, his clothes and hair laced with sand while his oh-so beautiful eyes accompany his fingers in picking at the stars.
They shone brightly, like his eyes once did.

His right hand reach for the above, the stars, while his left snake down touching the groves caused by earlier footsteps.
His fingers lace with the grains as he grasps the sandy grounds and mumbles to himself:

"Now I know,
That I can't make you stay
But where's your heart?
But where's your heart?"

He wonders and speaks in a cascading tone, his sad song playing in the back of his mind, each syllable becoming harder to pronounce as he clenches his teeth and closes his eyes fighting away the blows of the small crystalline grains scorching his face with such ferocity.

He was alone, confused, and abandoned.

The Black Parade had left neglecting its leader, his now hallow used leader.
His jacket had fallen apart; the laces and medals buried beneath layers of darkened nights and burning afternoons, only flakes of leather and frayed black cloth remained on his upper body.
The black from the skies and nights had smudged his face leaving halos around his wide hazels; the crazed look giving the rings an eerier impact on his appearance.

He growls recalling the pale faces of the ones who left him; the tired, the beaten the forgotten; him.
His sand filled hand reach to pull at the matted blond mop of hair upon remembering the calamities that whitened his hair in he first place.

His own death; the leader.

The events that lead him into heading all these parades, not this one alone.

Whenever one leave, a new one comes.
This has been his repetitive task all these seemingly endless years; heading these black parades, singing his heart and immortal soul to those patients.
The ones that can afford to acquire the bliss of passing over to their undesired demise.

He was chosen to lead those believers, the ones who had faith in him in previous and second lives.
When he was deemed broken, defeated and incomplete.

Those patients helped him ease the throbbing pains of the words whipping his torso and face wherever he went.
This is end of his quest; lain between the laps of the freezing desert nights waiting for the next parade...

Crack.

The demented yellow smile slowly drew itself on his brown stained lips as he heard; the crazed look lifted from the ground to see the skull floating next to his motionless body.
He picks up himself; psychotic smile still intact; dust sliding off of his jackets as the laces patched themselves up and re-attach themselves back to th gapes within the leather and the golden sheen revives in those eyes.

Those bright eyes.

He stands up tall, looking up at the now cloud ridden skies, the halo of radiant blond illuminating his pallid face in an awe-worthy frame.

It was the time to sing his song again.
Insane smile equipped the sparkle in his eyes grew as he witnessed it approach.

The parade paving for his familiar fall; the start for a new patient.

Licking his lips he walks his hand around his neck as the laugh escapes his throat. He kicks the sand and laughs again seeing the dead black and ashen roses -forming the ever-so recognizable skull- appear to his eyes, burning ruby red adorning the hallow eye sockets.
Turning to his left he saw them, then turning to his right he saw them, too.

They're back.

Bravery, dedication, honesty and innocence.

The four of them were back to sing his... their song.
Four lost souls and he was the fifth.
Faith. The leader.
Untied the five of them stand; their stares perch on the marching parade.

The Black Parade.

Not the first.
Not the last.
The Black.