It came upon like a thief in the night,
So sudden, so brutal, that I had no time to feel fright
It was thick and black like tar swirling through the air
Like a sudden flood rushing in, I had no time to spare
For from which the blackness was born,
Was a fierce fire that left in its wake a site most forlorn
It was merciless monster and consumed greedily,
For it ran from home to home gobbling them up so speedily
The family pictures bubbled and blackened,
The roofs that at one time stood so tall were now flattened
The front door that once closed us into safety,
Now limply hangs, looking to the ground so gravely
The heart of the home - the kitchen - you could see has lost its beat
It reads lifeless; its liveliness has been dissipated by the heat
The glorious tree that once stood gracefully over our backyard
Has branches as black as night and kneels hopelessly scarred
But one cannot forget… my sanctuary, my hiding place, my room
My dolls from childhood lie broken and bare in such gloom
My bed so snuggly and warm has lost its allure,
It lies now as a blanket of dark ash so impure
All that I once had seems so elusive,
As if trying to grasp a phantom, it is inconclusive.
It gives no evidence of its reality,
Like a sad fantasy it makes me doubt its actuality
So it becomes a hallucination, a chimera, an illusion
And so a dark dream is its conclusion