Ashes

I wake up gray
and dull
everything is grainy
like an out-of-focus
newsprint photograph
I feel like I'm walking
through a world of paper
2-dimensioned like a cut-out doll
Nothing is real, and I am just
a moving picture
with no awareness of myself
colourless and empty
with the pallor of an ashtray
until my paper world catches fire
and in that instant I'm alive
I have a spark
and then I'm ashes, lifeless, dark
blown away with just a breath
without a life, without a death

ily, 1999