Day 421

They are not wholly gone, the family
who lived in this fallen house:
they will sprout up as grass
when the concrete is lifted,
they will feed the roots of new trees.
New flowers will bloom
where the children who grew here
ran, climbed, stomped in puddles.
If you look long enough
at the charred walls, the collapsed roof,
you might see them, hands
and feet touching nothing,
drifting in and out of their torn flesh,
so newly dead they still
remember their names, the smell
of the smoke that engulfed them.
Slowly under the rubble
their bodies are returning
to the earth.  Their burnt skin
strips off like treebark, insects
and worms will work it
until it is soil.