Even when the fire has grown tired of burning
and the ash has gone to rest, the world will turn noisy
with the songs of the blades of grass,
formerly silenced by the footsteps of the old world,
and the cockroaches will whisper
the secrets of their immunity to a careless wind.
No one will listen.
Tranquility: the quality or state of being free from disturbance,
synonymous with unattainable, even in the rubble
the hills will be too tall for the ants to climb.
A notebook is left in a half-burned house, for no one
to find. Words left unopened, unread, unknown.
How many desires are stuck in the ink?
Soon it will decompose, taken by the Earth,
joining its brothers and sisters. The dirt holds more secrets
than we could ever care to learn.
Once, a woman sat in that chair, the one with three legs
instead of four, now toppled over on the floor.
She scribbled down notes for a daughter who had yet to be born,
to aid her own fickle memory, in an aimless attempt to gain control,
because her therapist told her it would help to write it down.
She was walking up the hill when the fires started
and now she finds kinship with the ants that outlived her.
Tranquility, the first word she wrote in her notebook,
whispered like a spell. At one point, she wished for everything to stop,
if only so she could catch her breath.
So when the fires start she wonders if God heard her prayers
and she wonders if He would accept her apology.