I awoke…
To something very new.
Something beyond the very thing I’ve grown accustomed to.
New skin.
New skin where the old skin once hanged.
Who’s face?
I twist and turn it between my fingertips.
Mine?
Are they mine?
Mine?
The peaks and valleys of my fingers.
I stare.
I descend within the canyons and begin this walkabout.
What was that lie again?
Something about the future youth.
Was it something about the youth?
Lost still in the canyons on my fingertips.
They say no two are alike.
I whisper down the wind to watch it float away.
Fluttering off to something beyond yesterday’s safety.
That gust rolls over...
This tongue.
Who’s tongue?
So many things that are not my own.
Which ones shall I break?
Which ones will I humpty back together?
I awoke…
The soot slid off my eyelids.
Layers fell in sheets until the warmth stopped giving.
Down the steps I went.
Something is no longer the same.
No accounting where to feeling rolls up from.
It colors me all the same.
Without prejudice.
Across the faux hardwood floors.
Scuffling across.
Universe to universe.
My skin peels up from the surface.
Sticky and moist.
Something out of place interlocks with
Something hiding in plain sight.
The food is ash.
The drink is ash.
These things composed of certainty are ash.
Maybe things are different in the sun.
I
Stumble down the stairs.
Elbows tucked inside.
The cracks they never show.
The sounds that never make their way.
Out the front door.
To where one expects to find the sun.
The is no sun.
No sun in that sky.
Let’s not call that sky.
All of it… it’s a lie.
The sun is a lie.
Nothing is revealed.
Nothing grows from ash.
Except.
Ash.
I AWOKE I AWOKE I AWOKE
My two hands digging at the ground.
Toiling beneath the lies.
Dark grey and drained.
Pulling ash crops from the ground.
My hands they disappear into the grey.
Who can survive this way?
Who can survive?
Eating ash cakes.
Ash steaks.
Only to never feel quite full.
Who’s hands?
Through the grey my hands, who’s hands, grope further
To the warmth.
Fumble in the dark.
Search for the sun.
Reach further out.
Touching flesh to flesh buried in this grey.
I once was future youth.
Now we have future truth.
I’m just the son that died.
That sun did die.
Slipping on it’s lies.
Son it told a lie.
Piled onto future youth.
Piled on the sun that lied.
Something no longer feels the same.
Who’s hands?
Who’s lines in the ash?
Who’s lines in my face?
The soot…
It suits…
Pressed and office ready.
I tumble down the ashphault.
Powered by the son.
Why would I come to this?
Whatever became of this?
There a whisper dancing in my eyes.
I had to blink.
I had to… look away.
These hands are fine but they aren’t mine.
I should find their origin.
Give them back.
Relive my own hands.
They belonged to me.
Before the ash.
Back in the past of future youth.
With the whispers and the lies.
Slammed shut.
Retreat.
Retreated.
Treated like the young.
Murdered them in the night.
Everyone they cried.
Sun burned away all that it once loved.
Treasured.