Cinder

The sad times come when everyone leaves:
the clearings echo in sudden silence,
the walls of empty rooms begin to speak softly,
reviewing and rehearsing what was said before,
the blaze has dwindled to embers and coals
and now smolders, smokes, the last of the slow burn.

Once upon a time, an orphaned girl, adopted
but alternately abused and neglected,
made her bed near the cinders of the kitchen fire
to keep warm in the cold nights of the stone castle;
bedraggled, covered in soot and ash, she emerged
each morning to the ridicule of her adoptive family -
but now that she is a princess and wakes each day in silks,
her hate has cooled from conflagration - to cinders.

In short succession, it is easy to lose much -
spouse, friends, family, work, connection, sanity;
and while once there seemed a light -
in the attic, at the end of the tunnel, after the long dark -
now the fuel has been combusted, the fire is gone,
the dis-ease has run its course, the party is over,
and even past mockery is just an echo in the silence,
past abuse a nightmare from which to wake every morn,
and if ever there were some flame of passion alive,
now there is only that which was not consumed by the fire.
 

All that remains is smoke and embers, coal and cinders,
hollowed-out shells once sturdy, ripe, and full of wooden flesh.