Balancing death on your head is not an easy thing.

The black-rimmed cover, faded, falling apart,
shedding pieces of black paper like snow.

Your tan shirt becomes a volcanic battleground,
the screams of children and a raging firestorm
hurling ashes -- dark as stormclouds --
into the blue abyss of your tears.

The forest turns to kinderling and
snaps into the hot, digested air,
a spectre of billowed smoke swallows and grows.