Ashes Wear White

Ashes Wear White 

The pathway is a torn ribbon,

stitched with hurdles like broken teeth.

I walk it, bruised,

while faces flare and fade,

blue as drowning seas,

red as bleeding wounds,

green as wilted envy,

purple as bruises that never heal,

black as midnight’s coffin.

They arrive like fireworks;

brief, dazzling, loud

and vanish like smoke,

leaving only the ache of air.

At the end,

all colors collapse into white;

not purity, not peace,

but a pallor like old bones,

a silence that stings sharper than noise.

It is the shadow we call black,

but it burns pale,

like snow that blinds the eye.

Even fire bows to it.

The pyre devours my body,

yet this white shadow

outlives the ashes.

It loops around me

like a snake swallowing its tail,

a ghost stitched to my heels,

a mirror where no one looks back.

I am left with it,

this whiteness that is not light,

this shadow that is not shade,

this eternal reminder

that even in a crowd,

I was only ever walking

with myself.