i have something to say to you, but first
there is soot in my mouth
and what is left of my charred-black tongue--
please take them; I don't use them anymore.

when i speak, do not listen, but look,
for my words have no sound--
they are ash-drawn figures
dancing silent in the wind.

i have something to say to you;
read it while i burn

A Fragment

...they came then to the place of the dry bones and the dead ground, both strangers in that strange land of ashes and dust. For so long they had dealt out death, in a way smarter men called quid pro quo, but he knew it only as one dripping-acid word: revenge.

There amid the hard rocks and the intractable sun he faced his dark other, his doppelgänger, his sins; for on the face of the other he saw the tears of the mothers whose children they had taken away, and in the smile of the other he saw the gnashing teeth of the boys oozing so much life away--and in the eyes of the other he saw the things he had been running from for so long. The things he could never escape.

They faced each other there, he and the other, to settle the score, already too high.

Hand to the holster. 3. 2. 1.

When they drew, neither fired; instead, they stood frozen as winds howled within and without them. He knew he needed to fire, to end it all. To get his revenge.

Dust blew across the dark other's face, then, and he saw in a flash the real and the true. He knew that death would take the dark other, and him, too, in time. He knew that when the dark other lay dead on the hot ground another would come to take up the mantle of pain and fear.

Why won't he shoot? he thought, and in that moment he saw the thing he feared most--he saw the dark other's eyes, gazing back at him with the same confusion and anxiety. And then, from outside or inside himself--is there a difference?--he heard it, loud and clear as a bell and as doom:

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Out of the holster like lightning, he pulled back the hammer and fired. His last conscious memory was the look of shock on the dark one's face. After that, all slid into black. He was aware only of the hot ground, and the wind on his face.

The dark one stood for a while where he was, looking on as the man's lifeblood watered the cracked earth. Next to the still-warm body he laid his hat, and he knelt down to cover the man's face with his handkerchief--but first, the dark one closed the man's eyes. Then he picked up the man's gun and put it in his satchel before heading back to the nearest town. It would be dark soon, and hungry things were bound to come.

For those that ever check this, I'm really sorry that I don't post more; truly, it's a big regret I have. Usually I have to apply my creative energies to more mundane things, and by the time I want to write, nothing comes, no matter how badly I'd like to.

Maybe that's why I'd like to. That would make sense. That the only time I want words is when I can't find them.

Do you hear that?
That sound?
It's the ocean.

And you are alone.