July goes out with a bang

walls collapse inward

port-a-loo effluence falls as rain

 

The sniper eats his breakfast

a fine dust of asbestos layers his tongue

his fingernails split by ricochet’d brick

 

Waking with his door like a coffin lid atop him

the room disappears into a falling sky

neighbours stagger blind like ghosts looking for shoes

 

And still the thunder resounds

though the dead now are all but dust

everything settles back to normal

 

Nothing but the memory remains the same,

there is before, after and now,

and the life that might have been.