Walking over the ash,
teetering the line between love and death.
There comes a crying from a stack,
hands and feet and heads staring up,
reflecting on the murky water.

Smoke is still spilling in the air, tumbling and
turning like a bride and groom dancing. But there
are no people here. You can see their eyes, without
the same refraction of light that made them human.
You can hear cries from the debris as your father leads you away.

Don't worry, he tells us all. It will be over soon.
The bombs will stop soon.
The sun will shine soon.
But soon was so far away; he had lied to his children.
Not in the way you would lie randomly though, pathologically.

He lied to them because he loved them. Because the bombs brought
back memories from his own childhood, where he already knew
from a young age they would never stop falling like glass shattered
from a bottle. Like the towels thrown over the bodies, flickering in the wind every which way.