TWO DEAD FLOWERS

Her steps are the gentle beat of the chorus of angels, of the hum of the world, of the slide of an old withered hand, of the tremble of a dead bony foot along the path. Her steps trace the ancient way, the blue pathway that follows the stars to heaven. The light of a thousand suns, and of ten thousand worlds strike her face with beams of light as sweet and as bitter as the days and nights of lives indefinite, lives that stumble to illusion and eternity. We dream of life everlasting, we dream of the garden and of the tree of comfort, we dream of the engines that drive the great wheels, and of our destiny within those wheels. But she knows, as she gently steps her way, there is nothing but dead flowers before her, and cinder and ash in her wake. She is the darkest of angels, the reaper of souls. There is no scythe, no dark cloak, no gaunt skull or pointed bony hand, just a luminous silver shadow and a light step as she picks her way through our jagged dreams, through our clawing nightmares. We are the chorus of pointlessness, the message voices of angels, we are the ten thousand names that can never be said above a murmur. We fall endlessly like pale dead leaves, as she traces her steps before and after, her eyes...two dead flowers.