SCAVENGING THE RUINS

 

SCAVENGING THE RUINS

Picking up the debris,

shards of splintered hope,

from the wreck

of a not-so-natural disaster—

a tempest brewed

in the cauldron

of human folly,

its winds howling

with the screams

of promises unkept.

Only foundations remain,

cracked slabs of concrete

jutting like broken teeth

from a jaw of scorched earth,

their roots

gnarled and exposed,

clinging to the dust

of a past

I can’t bury deep enough.  

Am I really back here,

dragged by fate’s

relentless undertow,

to this place I swore

I’d never return to—

a graveyard of vows,

its tombstones etched

with the same old curses,

end up in again

(same shit, different year),

a carousel of ruin

spinning on

an axis of regret?

The air chokes

with the ash

of déjà vu,

and my boots crunch

on the gravel

of yesterday’s collapse,

each step

a dirge

for the oaths

I carved into stone,

now crumbled

beneath time’s

merciless heel.  

Led to believe otherwise,

fooled by the siren song

that, like good wine,

with age,

would mellow into something finer—

a vintage of healing

poured from the years,

its bouquet

a promise

of better days.

Certainly, this is fiction,

a fable spun

from threads of delusion,

certainly not fact—

because, if so,

I, once again,

am a statistical anomaly,

a glitch

in the universe’s ledger,

a moth

trapped in amber,

wings beating

against the glass

of a cycle

that refuses

to let me

break free.  

The debris piles higher,

a monument

to my stubborn return,

and I sift through it,

hands bleeding

from the jagged edges

of what might have been—

another wreck,

another year,

another echo

in the hollows

of this endless ruin.