The Remaining Ash
A woody shade chokes the light where the road ends. The rifted door stands in thrall-a wooden mouth held open. A splinter waits on the sill, the only welcome the house affords. The air is cold enough to tether the teeth to the gums; the brief warmth of a shadow is not enough to break the stiffness. Is it the body’s last heat, or a soul creeping close? Soles catch on the bumps of calcified tears in the oak floor. The furniture exhales a varnish of lead and old rot. Light fidgets against the black curtains, a dying bird. A rocking chair growls under a chest of blackening meat. He sits in the corner, sifting through the hearth. His hands are grey, buried in the ash of a fire long dead. High on the wall, the silver-rimmed mirror starves, refusing to shine. The air densifies; the lungs shrug against the weight of it. Was it the room or the mist of his grief that choked the exit? Was it the man, or the dilemma of why he sifts the grey flakes? Perhaps the voices have finally convinced him: The past is still hidden in the soot. The floorboards shove me back. The door demands a knock. I leave the ruin exactly as I found it. — Chaitanya.G