The sky turned a grey shade of yellow
And the trees bent to the breath of the gods
The air screamed, as bark ached
And splintered and fell.

Rain turned to bullets, ricocheting from windows to ground
Secure became vulnerable
Heat became anger
Our sanctuary turned against us
We cowered and marvelled
At the power intent on our destruction
And took pictures of impending demise.

The heat presses down
Clammy hands over my mouth
The air burns my brain

Does fear stem from the heart
Or seep in through cracks in your skin?
Does it build up in your blood
Or soak into the layers?
Does it pump through the insides of your brain?
Or dissolve into every lungful of smoky air?
And does that poison protect us
Or slowly wear us away?

As we climbed
The hills behind unrolled themselves
And laid themselves out in the sun
To bask and beautify
The cascading brightness
As it tumbled down mountainsides
Into the lake
Skipping like a flat stone
And shimmering with each bounce
We watched as horizons became endless
As haze dissipated
To reveal another distance
Beyond the limits of our eyes
Marked only by the shadows of peaks
We couldn't quite see

Plaster peels off each cell wall
As the memories crumble of horrors they held
Each grated window a door to a belief
A superiority that bled out the "weak"

Rows of empty foundations
Regimented into corners as sharp as the tongues that commanded them
Little remains, but for the bell toll
And with it a million screams

Each detail refined for perfect horror
The floor cast to drain the heaped corpses
The smoke of their bodies still sits in the chimney
The blood of their slaughter still stains the wall

The pain is gone now, dissolved into flashbacks and imagined torture.
But the bullets and echoes of evil still sound
As we say "Never Again"

Lungs bypassing air
Heart forgetting how to beat
Brain losing control

Wood.
Carved by machine.
Curved for purpose.
Yet.
Snatched from logic.
Labelled a trophy.
An antivictory earned too hard.
Wood.
Stirring memories.