All He Sees Are Burnt Skies

Jas had to go back to the place where it all started. The air was cold yet the trees were on fire. He gave a weary smile at the inferno above his head. Scarlet and gold licked the blue sky. Just ahead a leaf tumbled from its weary branch, it twists and rocks as it falls through the almost still air. He paused to listen for the sound it makes as it joins its brethren on the ground but lost in the drone of the wind.

Jas remembered the way he held her to his shoulder, smaller than a bag of sugar from the grocers. 

Just then the nurse walks in looking all pale "We are extremely sorry for your loss. We could not save your wife. It was her choice. Your daughter is fine and healthy." and she walks away. 

He turns his teary eyes to her. His daughter. He watched his baby peer through brand new hazel eyes at what must be a strange world after life in the womb. She looked like his wife. She had her mother's hazel eyes. His daughter will always be the shadow of his wife.As his daughter curled her tiny fingers around his, he experienced paternal love and warmth and an urge to forever protect her.

He named her Hope and promised to be her hero. Her daddy!

10 years of blissful growing up and then Hope was diagnosed with untreatable cancer. Jas knew his daughter mirrored her mother in every form but was hoping against the hope to not have her mother's cancer gene.The moment the doctor told him the world came crashing down for the second time. The cancer spread, consumed and, squashed every organ that worked to sustain it. The doctor's words splinter inside him causing more pain that the news of her rebelling against cancer. 

Terminal. 

Hospice. 

Comfort care only.

 Did these words live in his life before? 

No more walks in the park, no more birthdays with Hank at the bowling alley and she won't see any other snow season. Her life from here on is in four walls and pain medication until she dies. 

Death. A familiar word in his dictionary now. 

When cancer took Hope she was all skin and bones, pale as a ghost, face masking the ordeal inside. Most days she asked Jas to read her a story, something salubrious to help her mind escape from these inharmonious melodies. But there were times she screamed in pain and there was no doubting the agony. Her beautiful hazel eyes turned to a tiring brown, hunched back into the sockets.

It's true what they say. Tragedies keep coming. The war never ends. 

He stood in front of his house, his screams echoing in the smoke, restrained as flames licked the house. It played, burning the grasses bleached yellow by the sun. The toxins choked the atmosphere out of oxygen. The babysitter sat crying on the grass. His little princess disappeared to ashes and bones. It was as if she evaporated to the All-Mighty. 

Why did you do this to me? His mind screamed. He broke free of the grasping hands and disappeared into the world where no one knew him and hope did not exist. 

He loved her!

Now, all old with a growing beard and charred hands, he stands in front of the house that was only reserved for Hope and him. But it seems that the spiders have made their place between the burnt timbers. They have laced the walls with cobwebs of intricate beauty. It's been decades, since a footstep, echoed within those walls since the dust had been disturbed and the ghosts, awoken.