Scorched Reckoning

In the heart of the dry season,

embers spark, flickering disdain,

like tremors of discontent

igniting the cool air,

a breath that swells,

quick as fury brewed in shadows.

Raging flames claw upward,

a choir of crackling voices,

each roar a sharpened word,

each spark a grievance unspent,

each flame a thought unprocessed,

a wildfire surging under the dome

of a withering sky.

The wind, alive with rage,

carries the stench of upheaval,

drifting through the streets,

into the halls of power.

No respite,

only the heat that intensifies

and pressurizes the air

around a boiling point,

breaking forth with no warning.

And in the wake,

a terrain of ash spreads wide,

charcoal-blackened ground,

once vibrant, now a canvas of despair,

where ghost-notes of life are swallowed,

silenced under the burden of fire’s breath.

Here, no song of bird, no laugh of child,

only the scorned horizon,

a barred expanse, stripped bare,

where hope once painted colors bright,

now eternally hushed and husked.

The remnants of rage leave nothing untouched,

only ruin.

In this scorched earth,

beneath the smoldering sky,

lies the reckoning,

a testament to what once burned bright,

now left

desolate,

unfeeling,

an endless gray where life could never thrive.