Surreal Lament

Midnight. A town abandoned like a peeled scab on the desert’s back.

Far-off thunder cracks open the sky like a rib cage

revealing the heart’s flickering lantern.

A tumble of ash drifts down the boulevard,

not weed, but memory rolled tight as a scroll of forgotten names.

A jackal cries, splits into a girl sprinting barefoot across the hotel’s mirage façade.

The building breathes like a sleeping leviathan.

She climbs a staircase of wind-bent bones,

floorboards groaning like old violins in mourning.

Mirror tilts, shows a face carved from drought,

eyes like dried riverbeds where harvest once wept.

She sheds her skin, steps into an oil painting

where the mountain smokes like a pipe of the gods.

She vanishes into the clouds’ stitched hem.

The canvas closes like a mouth swallowing prophecy.

Eyes blaze from the summit’s veil,

scanning the town like a hawk reading braille in the dust.

Ash wind rolls upward, joins her on the peak.

Frame opens, she steps out, trailing the scent of thunder.

She lies on a bed of rusted springs,

ash wind curls beside her like a loyal ghost.

The jackal sings.

The blinds yawn.

Sunlight pours in like spilled honey from a cracked jar of time.

She cradles ash and beast, chanting a dirge that tastes like salt and fire,

a dream unmasked by morning’s breath.