Dregs

brick by brick

a/n: this started off as a poem but i didn't like it like that so now it's just kind of a funky little paragraph. please enjoy <3

i stand by myself in front of a ruined building, cemented clay blocks strewn across the withered yellow grass like a mess made by an insolent child. there is a brick in my right hand. my grip on the crumbling burgundy slab is so tight that white spots bloom over the backs my knuckles. i look down at them carefully, not so sure quite what to think. could they be flowers yet to grow, to push past the wilted mess i call a yard and reach high, high above for the warm smile of their mother, the honeyed sun? for their father, the cool drops of rain that sink familiarly into their roots which wait like open arms? i blink both my eyes hard, pressing my left hand's grimy fingers into them, trying in vain to extract the grit which taints my vision and scratches my eyes just so slightly, for i am in a mind of which such faint lacerations could rapidly drive me to madness. after a moment, my body rattles out a heavy sigh, and i acknowledge to myself that i am procrastinating. i cannot ignore the bucket of gray pasty mortar that awaits me much longer. i breathe in a bout of thick, humid air and it catches agonizingly in my throat. a hacking cough bubbles up, forcing its way through my chest and out of my mouth, prying my lips open to escape into the air that presses in all around me. it does not feel like a hug, but i think that someday, when i am completely rebuilt, it will.