Ashes! Ashes! We All Fall Down.

You wake me; I’m all scarlets and steady streams of autumn.
They fall into the porcelain far easier than you’d think,
and just sit there, a one-by-one subtraction.
(god, I was never good with math.)

There’re monsters beneath your feet, and their frustration
huffs and puffs from the wood like chimneys,
rib walls trembling with the urge to worship either.

Sometimes, when the night is harsh in velvet,
I watch you set them on your alters, and violence
becomes a color dark enough it covers dreams:

skin the shape of an apple-pie crust, mind the canyon of a meteor;
you had enough to water impact zones, but I never grew
deep enough to weather away ‘rotten.’

I smile at you, like I know what I’m doing,
and slowly pull myself undone.