Hazelnuts

You sit in the dark, realising something is wrong. You arise, realising that you used to lie, but are now sitting up, in bed. You are drawn to the window, to the gentle tap of the yellow fog. You sniff the air, and you know.

It is the time of the burning.

All things that can burn will burn. The air is redolent of burnt tyres, burnt Tyre, and all you know is that while it smells oh-so-fragrantly oh-so-flagrantly of that... it is actually the smell of burnt trees, of the dying of forests, of the surrender of branch and root before the force of fire.

It is the time of the haze.

My life locks into focus, my nostrils are burning. I smell the smell of loss, the scent of defeat, the aroma of the knowledge that man is not ever going to be good, this far from Eden. We need a kind of grace, a kind of amelioration of a bleak and bad-ass nature. We are not going to get there on our own.

It is the time of ash and thorn.

I am sitting on the floor. I am searching for something that has been taken. Though much is taken, much abides. And though we are not now that strength... I do not know what I have lost. Is it my mind?