the end
original poem by me
The house held for years, through births and deaths. Love and lust and hate. Through joy and rage. It stood, absorbed all the bad into its bones and still it stood. Till it didn’t. Ashes flicker in the dusk like snowfall. Smoke billows like the last breath of a dying body. The beams that held, stoic in their burden have buckled. A half-singed toy lay in the rubble, pictures lost to the sparks. The fire goes out with a huff, the last held breath released. There is a strange and wretched beauty in the dust. The house not a grave, but an offering. What’s left? What’s lost?
No god will answer you. The world shifts and the smoke clears and in the silence it is warm. Pull the card off the deck. It is death. The death card isn’t tragic, it’s just the end. A period on a page. Endings are punctuation, but you still hold the pen.
Far from the ashes the forest keeps its own counsel, a heaviness in the dark green hush. A monument, a giant, a gift. Stood tall for generations, shading the underbrush. Now, it lays in rest, a victim to the shifting waters of time. The roots exposed, the gnarled body like an ancient god, rain-soaked and forgotten. Maybe a ruin. Maybe an altar. But always an end. Roots half buried, clinging to the soil like a prayer. The tree does not mourn, it just breathes differently now.
Don’t fear the scythe. All severing is seedwork.
Far beyond the forest, past the reaches of soil or ash. A star glows, burning brighter, blooming wider than it ever dared before. A final signal flare—marking its own death. Released from its duty, its radiance untethered. Still it marks in the sky like a memory—a scar of light. The brutal burst of its last dying supernova. Scattering gold and iron and stardust. A hand, a lung, a heartbeat, a soul. All things end.
The universe reshuffles its deck and pulls out a new card. The world. It all begins again.
