The curtains are parted above two bare bodies laying tangled together, one with tear tracks on his cheeks and the other with bruises.
The crops burn as the prisoners sleep.
The deer is shot with an arrow as an axe falls to cut a tree.
The swings keep swinging long after someone has swung on them.
The car keeps running even though it is empty.
The feathers fall with no wind to catch them.
The waves wash on with the tide, the shells following with the eroding sand.
*Two sets of clothes neatly stacked on the beach side by side, the inner bodies no longer tangled.
Eternal spirits forever as one.
Husks swept away long before sun rise brightens up the day again.

I keep saying no
because if I said yes,
then you'd end up like
the rest.

In the sadness and rage filling every inch of my thoughts, I was a lonely figure standing among the charred trees and ashes, holding an empty bucket of water and inhaling smoke more than I'd ever breathed air.
I was a dying candle with the wick down to its stem, hardly able to hold a flame much less give light.
Because the more I gave the less I seemed to exist. And the only thing I had left to give was my existence.