Eruption

We had no thought of dying before daylight.
True, we'd felt the building move
and heard neighbours remark the rumbling,
but we were used to bombast by this time
and could only tell them
that the mountain knows its place.

So life trudged on,
hiding itself in semblance of routine;
but still we felt the magma surge beneath out feet
and ached to speak but could not
lest the curse upon us be discovered
and the pressure released.

We yearned for a sibyl.

That night
as we stilled our tremblings in the eggshell house
and watched the thickened air ooze from wall to wall
a single whispered word upset the scale
and the world exploded.
We swam in fire until the blood boiled in our brains
and smothered us in our own silence...
in the end
lacking even gods in the heavens
to echo our feeble cries.

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This was brought on by a combination of couple of family violence stories in the news and a documentary on Pompeii. I thought it might be an interesting comparison, but then I got a little stuck and put it away before I'd refined it.

I still haven't refined it.

Am I happy with it? No.

So why am I posting it?



No idea.