The Aftermath

Meaning is over there, beyond the burnt paddocks and blackened hills, the crumpled, flattened ruins of houses. It is further out than that nothingness glazed upon the distances of a vacant stare. A powdery dust now coates the walls of a terrible absence. There is a gaping silence, a hole emptied of screams, of moans, cries given up to heaven. What was living has been burnt back to where only a dull numbness chafes against passing time. Melted pots poke through a tangle of charcoaled waste. Memories, lifetimes crumble into flakes of ash and amongst the rubble, a fire blackened teddy bear with outstretched arms seems baked in a posture of perpetual still, holding onto something beyond the reach of fire.