Burnt

A silhouette of the burning pyre still remained glazed in my eyes.

It seemed as if the time would never move again. It seemed as if grief was immortalized in the air forever. It seemed as if my voice had escaped me. It seemed as if the echoing wails in the voids created, would never be satisfied. 

My heart felt like a broken glass beyond repair, its edges piercing into my conscience. The sharpness, septic with suffering, cut through, making it bleed regret and remorse.

My lumping throat was choking me alive. Alive…? No, I had died. Died with the last of the flames that had fed upon the confessions of my soul. 

The burnt remains lay in a pathetic mess. A treasury robbed of its riches, a warrior fallen from demeanor, a child denied innocence, a wonder maimed to ignorance. 

Broken, scattered, wasted…. blackened to the color of moaning Akhlys.

……………

The numbness of my skin, jerked to sensation, as my fingers touched the dead residue of history. I cradled the ashen remnants as gently as one would hold a newborn, tears profusely soaking through the soot.

My blackened fingers turned and weaved around my skin, leaving trails and traces of the guilt I carried in my heart. The brand of color had marked me, for I was a sinner. A murderer of beauty…

I pressed the smeared soot upon the surface of parchment, as softly as one would kiss a newborn. And the imprints slept in an oblivious stupor…

But as my fingers stroked the sleepy texture of the prints, a smile crinkled upon my lips. Because the end only closes to a beginning. 

And I know that the blotches of dead ash shall revive…not to lurk in the shadows of night, but to rise towards the break of dawn.

And then, the morning bird’s trill

shall sing to their fame. 

And then, the world

shall be theirs to claim…