Ashes

By Autumn Turley

hey old boy
how have you fit so much living into so few years?
people twice your age haven’t lived as long as you have
the fires of their lives produce nothing but black ashes that pollute the earth
leaving a smog so thick that people can’t see what life really is
you scrape up the ashes
and store them in the backpack on your back
carrying them around with you as you try to figure out how to recycle them to make something beautiful
but with all the fear and greed and ignorance that surrounds you
you pick up the ashes of people’s wasted lives faster than you can use them
and you’re so busy with other people’s lives that you don’t have time or energy to live your own
your backpack looks heavy
let me take some of that for you
before you end up with so many ashes from other people that you smother your own fire
leaving the world that much colder and darker

hey gray man
you finally saw through the smog
and realized that what you thought was your life
is really nothing but black ashes
and you want desperately for someone to take your ashes and recycle them to make something beautiful
but you’re old and cold and your fire is dying
and you see the warmth of all the fires around you that people are coveting for themselves
so you toss your ashes at them, hoping that they can use their own fires to make something beautiful from your old ashes
but in doing to you’re showing these people that the mirage they see in the smog is nothing but ugly wasted ash
they don’t want to see that
so they don’t
and your ashes fall unchanged to the ground
to mingle with the rest
and you spend the last of the energy from your fire fruitlessly throwing your ashes around
your fire looks like it’s dying
let me show you how to make something beautiful from your own ashes
before you end up using so much energy throwing your ashes at other people that your fire burns out