The Slow Burn

The silent fire takes no wood, needs no wind to fan its breath. It gnaws at the iron bones of things we thought would last, a bloom of orange dust on cold steel.

We build our monuments to permanence, towers reaching for the unchanging sky. But the air carries the seed of our undoing, invisible moisture, a patient thief stealing the luster from our grand designs.

Flakes fall like dry, heavy snow, a testament to the inevitable return. What was pulled from the earth by sweat and flame and force, yields slowly, softly, to the rain.