I keep moving, feeling my way along a wall.
I stop again, another wall. I hear things,
can only hear things in the gloom and darkness.
I believe I am headed to an opening but
here is yet another wall.
I feel like a drowning
child reaching for the ocean’s surface,
heading for air with my last breath
but instead touch the sea bottom.
I find no air where I search
where I touch. Now,
for the first time, I have the
cold keen awareness that
the heavy ash will kill me
in this unkind tower-particled hole.
My breath comes
in short gasps,
inhaling the hot
grit-filled cloud
I pause to gather some
breath. My hands reach out.
I am in a corner,
three walls about me.
The concrete has
an unforgiving hardness.
I shiver. I am not brave
but cannot accept
the thought of my own death.
I grow desperate to be saved.
I am not yet ready to die,
though I become aware
it is less and less my choice.
Now, unable to see,
unable to escape,
unable to breath,
I understand death
approaches me.
How strange a turn it is,
the place I ran to for protection
becomes a death place.
My cave is a conspirator
against me. How like the tower
for those who trusted
it for security is this tunnel
becoming for me.
And like the tower,
it too is a fraud,
a fabrication.
The opening of hope
was a fly trap and I the fly.
In taking its offer
too quickly, I was
taken in by the fragrance
of freedom, of escape
from tumbling tower.
Now comes the same surprise
for me as the fly who tastes the nectar
feels the sudden shadow
snap over him.