Ash and Echoes (Rhymed Version)
Smoke coils high where whispers die, the wind a ghost in a hollow sky.
Ruins lean where homes once stood, their bones of stone, their veins of wood.
A doll lies quiet in the street, its hands untouched, its face discreet.
No voices hum, no children run—just dust that glows in the drowning sun.
Walls wear wounds like battle scars, cracked and torn beneath the stars.
Flags, though frayed, refuse to fall, their colors dimmed but standing tall.
Through shattered doors and broken glass, echoes rise of what once was—
Laughter soft, a song, a name—gone, yet lingering just the same.
And through the wreckage, slow and weak, walks a soul too lost to speak.
Their breath is tattered, limbs unsure, but still they move, they still endure.
For even now, through fire and fray, through skies of ash and fields of gray,
A heartbeat lingers, faint but true—a whisper left of what we knew.
And in the dust where sorrow sleeps, hope still stirs, though buried deep.
Ash and Echoes – Monologue
Smoke dances where the wind once played, curling through the ribs of shattered buildings, whispering secrets to the ghosts of laughter that no longer live here. The streets, once pulsing with hurried footsteps and careless dreams, now cradle only silence—thick, heavy, unrelenting.
A child’s doll lies in the dust, its glassy eyes staring at the sky, watching a sun too weary to shine. Walls wear their wounds like old soldiers, cracked and hollow, yet standing—defiant against the ruin. Flags, tattered but unbroken, cling to broken poles, their colors muted but not erased.
Somewhere in the distance, a lone figure walks—a silhouette carved from sorrow, moving through the wreckage like a hymn unsung. Their hands, rough with yesterday’s grief, tremble at the weight of memory, at the absence of hands they once held. But their feet keep moving.
For even here, amid the ruins, something lingers. A heartbeat beneath the rubble. A breath that refuses to fade.
Hope, fragile yet fierce, waiting to rise.
Michael Forty