Existence

Black clouds kiss the sky

Thick fog settled cross the playground

Where a swing dances back and forth

Empty, aimless

Finger etches in the sand

Drawn out stories from before

The end of times

The air is thick with carbon

Dense on the tongue, as I tell her story

Shadows diffused and distanced

By the hidden sun

I chew on my thoughts a moment

Nothing sates the hunger

For some company

In this desolation

Concrete barriers, half crumbled

Stretch arms to the horizon

A ruined metropolis

Unending

As fractured light falls through

Shattered windows

I wish I had been there

When they were broken

There is no sound here now

I wonder sometimes, if I've gone deaf

If the world is screaming, and it is only I

Who lives in silence

I speak out loud, the sound

Distorted by expectation

I can't tell if this is all

In my head

Black clouds erase time

The langoliers are surely coming

It must be me, out of place

Out of time and space

In a world I don't recognize

The dust has settled heavy on

Everything, a green-gray tint

Spilt out across my sight

She is a vision in this

Filthy and clean and

Innocent, and guilty me

I'm in the thick of this

Apocalypse, as she moves her lips

I am reminded what life sounds like

It is madness, her words spread plague across

My senses, devour my interpretation

And she passes muttering obscenities

And her words echo in my head

Long after her dust-caked back

Has faded from my vision

I remember, once, life was something more

Than mere existence.