As the Fog Lifts

A Poem by Elisabetta

The fog lifts,
Its gauzy grey-blue tendrils still cling to the gnarled blackened tree limbs as the bright red sun slowly acends.
Dawn means death; death is impossible. I must gather my kin and escape.
As the sun rises, the true images of the night before grow sharper;
I feel my skin grow tight, my breath weak; smoke lingers at my feet; smoldering ashes still rain slowly from the sky
                        Footsteps slowly approach from the south. Heavy footsteps, footsteps that mean trouble for me and my kind.

I run: from light, from pain, from truth,
Truth of what I've done, what I've become. The breath of endless expired innocents taken by my dark hand.
I run until my breath comes in gasps, my chest heaves and coughs erupt as stars dance behind my eyes.
My footfalls drown out those from the south. They cloud my eyes from the horrors surrounding me. They protect me.
                        Protection from the contaminated, fetid, tainted soul I carry with me, or is it from the chaste, virtuous self I've left behind?

The light grows stronger,
I see clearly now the truth of what I have become. My soul forever damned, not alive enough to conform; not dead enough to become enshrined in my past.
I am forever torn; tied to both positions; the white and the black; the living and the dead; the good and the evil; I am ambient; stuck
My eyes burning, tearing, painfully adjusting to the ever rising sun. Its redness closely matching the blood that courses through my veins
The black of the charred remains of my brethren darkened more by the fear in my heart; the fear in my soul.
                        The steps grow closer; the soldiers of the innocent army; knowing not what they fight, what they fear.

I am seen.
Walking first, then running; weapons at the ready, they decend
I feel the ropes of fire driving through me; the wounds healing before the bullets even leave my carcass.
I hear voices, first incensed, growing louder, stronger, fiercer; then replaced with dark but protective voices.
I feel my body being lifted away from the pain, the struggle, the carnage left of my house. My feet float above the trees; and I with them
                        As the fog lifts