Torch

the ashes stuck to my foot and shoe like the sides of my throat to one another when a secret was tip toeing to the surface
i hauled back
kicked all that remained of four years of words and investments and lies

i watched it, twenty minutes earlier
go up in flames
fueled with what later helped the healing
ate my heart alive, still beating
at that door
and when
my lips and eyesight began to tremble
my chest and mind joined in
and when it hit, that earthquake, that shattering moment
i was ripped right back open

every word
felt sincere at the time
i counted down the days like the end would never come
nothing seemed real then - just beyond reach
and seeing them again
after they spent so long rotting away in a dresser drawer and then a box in my closet
that was the walls closing in
faster than ever before

then it was sitting in front of me
that once silver, now cindered box
filled to the brim with
hopes, dreams, blindness, and now hindsight
nothing but
heaps of smoldering gray, black, and white
they and he burned before me
disappeared
destroyed

i know
i know deep down
that the devastation will never be mutual
it'll never be equal or fair or right
vengeance and justice will never really
come knocking at his door
but seeing the end of
every bit of evidence of his grasp
wiped my face every bit as clean as his
and reminded me
my hands
were never
the ones
soaked
in
blood.