Once we revered fire, our faithful friend,
A spark to warm, a beacon through the night—
Now flames descend, and cities meet their end,
Our love for fire consumed in blinding light.

Steel towers shudder, glass melts into bone,
The sky is bruised by thunder’s iron psalm.
We built our sanctuaries, sins to atone,
But faithless walls dissolved before the storm.

A president’s hand shakes, clutching the code,
His prayers dissolve in radioactive rain.
The righteous and the ragged share the road,
All equal now in hunger, loss, and pain.

The corn stood burning in the Kansas fields,
Where missiles rose like prayers to vengeful gods,
And all our science, all our mighty shields
Became the very lightning-bearing rods.

The wheel of fortune turned its final round,
July’s sun scorched as winter’s shadow fell,
And in the cinders, some survivors found
That hope still walked from fires none could quell.

A lone soul drifts through ruins, swathed in ash,
Guarding embers against the bitter night.
She dreams of dawn beyond the poison’s flash—
Hope kindles on, defying blight’s cold bite.

Yet from the silence, laughter cracks the gloom—
A jest of fate, as weeds reclaim man’s throne.
The architects of progress meet their doom,
While children play with relics of rubble and bone.

And so we sift the ruins for a sign—
A clock that ticks, a memory out of place.
As we implore answers from a vacant sky,
Fate stares back from a mirror’s fractured face.