Ash of Pompeii

The hill of beauty.

That's what we all called it.

The green of the rolling grasses

Up and down.

The blue of the sky

touching its tip.

And the mystical white peak

At the very edge of the city

Just stood and watched.

And Waited.

And Waited.

And Waited.

"He's angry

said my father.

"I don't know 

What we did."

"But it was something wrong."

I don't exactly

Remember how it happened.

But I do know

The clouds that once smiled at us.

Grew black with anger.

The grass now gray with dust.

The blue sky hid

Frightened.

And that's when I heard the voice of God.

Rumbling in the deep.

They all died.

All of them.

I was dead too.

My mind, not my body.

The Earth took them from me.

I wasn't angry.

I was scared

Of what I had done.

It brought darkness from above.

The skies that taught me to love the light

Were now telling me fear the dark.

I was never afraid before.

Ever.

But I am now.

I can still hear 

Screaming.

Crying.

Laughing.

Yes, laughing.

The fools thought it was a joke.

The scholars thought it was an eruption.

The fortune teller thought it was a sign.

The priest thought it was God.

But I

I knew it was death.

I knew it before anyone.

That's why my body's alive

But my mind.

It speaks nothing but the terrible things it saw

Nothing but the screams it heard.

Nothing but the anger.

I still have the gifts.

Ash they call it.

It's still in my hands.

So that 

When I close my eyes.

I can wish it all away.

Author's Note: This poem depicts the fictional account of a survivor of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii.