Jules left her boyfriend sleeping in the tent.
She sat by the fire, drinking piping hot and bitter
campfire coffee, hearing the gunfire from the city,
not far enough away, still close enough to catch them.
The mountains will burn to in the fire, all left as ash.
No new shoots of grass would shoot up again,
no clear waters, cool and clean, would flow again.
No new life would come here ever again.
The angel in the sky had crumbled, stone eroded,
and all the pieces were without light, and the wings
torn and useless, the halo fueled on the hellfire split open,
as a venerated demon let it loose, not seeing damnation coming.
Her boyfriend Sebastian comes out, finally awake. He sleeps fear away.
He sits beside her on the log in front of the fire. They sit in silence, not touching.
“Maybe we should go deeper into the forest.” He says.
“There’ll be no Eden there. No peace. No garden against the fire.”
Jules drinks her coffee. The sunlight as useless as his kisses. As useless as hope.