The ashes.
Trickling down from the sky in endless streams of gray.
Falling onto my head and all around me,
Blending into my clothes and giving me a dress and crown of ashes.
Not only landing on me, but their dry, burning touch
Being absorbed into my skin,
Raining down throughout my body.
Even though they are hot to the touch,
I shiver as they fill my insides,
Small flecks of gray, black, and white scorching my inner self.
Sending my body into compulsive frenzies attempting to make the burning stop.
The ashes continue to fill me,
Ashes of burned, scorched, ruined memories,
Ashes that are all the same now,
With no other meaning than to fill my mind, body, and soul with meaningless gray flecks of past nothings.
The ashes are gently flowing down inside me.
Like a drizzle over a waterfall,
Then tumbling over and out of sight into a
Breathtaking and depressingly beautiful river and pool of ashes down below.
Being weighed and patted down with my tears,
Condensing themselves into the smallest corners of my body.
Making room for more ashes.
I can taste their chalky, bitter texture on my tongue.
Ashes that used to be green and jumping with life,
Now only weigh and drag me down into a darker, colder, more depressing pit than I was in before.
Soon into nothing but a bed of ashes.
And as the last ash falls upon my gray ashen head,
I struggle and reach up
To wrap my pale, gray, suffocating fingers
Around the microscopic green
Fleck.
A single memory salvaged from the up-earthing
Downfall of ashes.