Ash

The ash-covered clock ticks alone under the death sky. It counts out heartbeats that will never be, breaths never to be taken, lives never completed. The crumbling window sill threatens to tip it into the smoldering cinders; the wall is propped up only by a beam. A man with rusting silver eyes lies still on the ground; unmoving, unknowing, unliving. The soft tapping of metal hitting metal drifts on the wind, accompanied by the faintest strains of an accordion. For once, heaven is not a place one wants to be.