THE SCORCHED GROUNDS

I have walked there when gardens burned,
when every lesson came unlearned,
when what I thought I could not lose
was taken without asking whose.
The smoke still curls above the lane,
a ghost of some forgotten flame,
and every breath I draw recalls
the fire that once consumed these walls.
There are no flowers here to tend,
no pretty lie of 'this will end'
only the blackened stems that show
what once was living long ago.

Black stems. A lane that still smells like the last match.
12×18 matte from The Lunatic Gardens — the plot that refused to go green again.