Mantid

[Leanne]

The end is embedded in the beginning:

So it should come as no surprise -- starting a stanza on a conjunction really buggers up all the experts and their "don't do thats", so of course I'm going to love it when it works, as it does here
my squall bites and stings in unholy rage, -- love "my squall bites and stings" but unholy rage is borderline cliche and probably a bit overly telly
acid rain against the quarried walls

crumbled at the foot of my heart,
which beats to spite me. -- yes, they do that don't they? Great notion.

My death has yet to deliver my life,
and I am poised
to forget long days
and endless summers. -- interesting inversion, considering these are the things all the songwriters go on about as memorable

Rain pops like hot grease -- again an inversion of the traditional image of rain as cooling
against the fake sky of my room.
I feed off false warmth and stale iron.

Blood in my mouth.

Still no howl,
where my soul is stone
or pillars of salt. -- does it need to be more than one pillar?

You be Sodom, and I'll play Gomorrah, -- "be" Sodom as opposed to "play" Gomorrah seems very pertinent to me, as does the fact that Gomorrah is usually only mentioned as an addendum to Sodom, with not even a specific "sin" attached to its name
trapping would-be trespassers and tourists.

The desert was as close as I came. -- I really don't understand your use of a full stop here
To the sea.

Winter turns a book of faith
into myths of transformations. -- We believe anything in the spring and summer, when we're carefree and the sun makes us drowsy, but winter is a time of introspection and dark questions. This ties nicely back to your forgetting endless summers, which with this line becomes a passage to enlightenment

I long to crystallize,
coaxed out of rock and sea stars -- beautiful
and return -

as elaborate architecture.

I could bloom from the ancients
and emerge
with an elongated body and wings.

A mantid.
Enigmatic, yet uneloquent. -- a paradox to finish, as any enigma is eloquent simply in its existence... this reminds me of nothing more than Ozymandias, silence and mystery inspiring endless volumes of speculative discussion

Some pure gorgeousness here, Aish. The mantid is inspired as its metamorphosis is quite subtle -- very little changes from nymph to adult except that they reach sexual maturity and develop wings, but still appear much the same. And of course, they both pray and prey.