' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' Her Last Week On Earth

The sea burst into flames turning up at the edges waves crinkled & shrank into themselves if only she had known that this was to be her last week on earth she would have laughed thought of it as a weird title for a bad book or the title of a Dónall Dempsey poem. The bright green forest burnt to a crisp. The sunset (ironically) catching fire glorious with colour. Her last week on earth had been uneventful not even meriting a diary entry except for Thursday’s note to self: “Sean has got to go! ” The flames snickering licking everything with their fierce little orange and yellow tongues the heart attack so sudden she couldn’t see it coming the paint on the tip of the brush looking blindly for the picture perched upon an easel but that little touch of cerulean never getting there the knocked over candle painting the room in lurid colour hungry for the seascape (she had taken great pains with it) angry at its incompleteness the fiery tongues attacking the paint like a hell-fire preacher or an ignorant art critic burning both sea & sky forest & figure at the left hand foreground of the canvas the fire greedily eating the hastily painted figure the fire now eagerly eating her hair like candyfloss. A passing man & his dog calling the fire brigade beneath a crescent moon as she slept in the arms of Death deep in the heart of the fire.