April 21

Panorama of a war in the back of my skull
A matrix of burgundy smoke
Grenades, sparks
Crumbling stone palisades.
All sound is muted
As if through thick glass.
Sulfuric lights flash sickeningly.
Pebbles, powdered cement burst
Fall slowly
Outward and down
In lazy, terrifying arcs.
No guns
No soldiers
No sides.
A city in the distance.
No sky, only endless boiling clouds.
No you
I am nothing
I am diffuse throughout what little air remains.
There is only the scorched earth
Strewn with crumbled stone
Lonely stretches of defiant, unmoving, martyred stone walls
Watching their comrades evaporate around them.
Everything is the color of wine.