Tairngir tellings

There is a feeling you get after you have sobbed
like you have a bad cold.
You struggle to swallow
and keep air and saliva down.
Often that has happened to me
when the tears won't come.
The body responds as if I have wept,
but for some reason
all that salt water and snot
instead of falling
and cleansing
has collected around the vocal chords
straining speech
and absorbing
the heavy breaths.
Forming a ball
of molten lead
moving liquid to solid
as breaths stutter
in and out.

I marvel that this most vulnerable part of ourselves:
that slender pillar
connecting head to body
can hold all that weight.
Though it seems destined to,
sitting as it does;
at the juncture
connecting body and brain,
heart and mind.
Holding onto
that which has become
stuck betwixt the two.

Stacked, slanted
to form a tower
that leans
as if built upon a marsh
defying sense

Bark and fibre
call to mind
the characters
of stories and flames
long burned out

Dancing with light
and shimmering in heat
this offering to the present
whose memory
warms long after
all is turned to ash

Grown from dust
and to dust returned
recalling all the those flames
extinguished long since

though truly
their energy
can never
gutter, splutter
or truly die.