Assess what can be salvaged

Snatch your picture books 

Cradle your memories 

With wide eyes and parted lips 

The walls are chipping 

Crumbling mortar 

Clouds the air 

Choking - I climb out of the destruction

To your right!

Take Cover! 

There goes our safe place

It was more precarious than we thought

We fortified 

We stocked provisions

We discussed 

Still we are cracking

To your left! 

Duck! 

Our silk sheets 

Ablaze like we once were

Your cologne explodes around me

Once a comfort 

Now something fetid 

Forgotten and rotting 

Mirrors crack 

Now we have no choice

But to look not at ourselves

But the absence of each other

We lobbed words 

Like Molotov cocktails 

Burning and blistering us 

It’s all collateral damage