After all the ashes fell to ground
we learned what it was to be still.
Truly still, no sound, no move, no breath;
the air was silence, the earth was silence.
Forced introspection like this is dangerous,
abruptly confronting thoughts
that were better left unvisited,
thoughts that burned down,
thoughts that fell with the ashes.
I believed I was careful and calculating,
were my thoughts like this all along?
This tenuous, ill-constructed house of cards?
Order wafts away like a vapour
under close scrutiny, and card houses
collapse with hardly a breath,
and fire catches with ghastly ease.
Such disorderly conduct should have consequences.
Such weak conjunctions have no right to join sentences.
Such a chill morning should never exist.
Such tearful eyes should never meet mine
in a breathless moment of sorrow,
like they did that day between the shadows
of a burnt and blackened elm tree.
Where did all the flames go?
Can it really end so suddenly?

Weary words you spoke,
“It is only what it is.”
(Though memories of the smoke
still fill your lungs and make you choke.)