I.

The smell
            so pungent you can see it,
  the fermentation of sky
            prickling at your skin.
              An alloy of brackish & sewer water
stinging nostrils, the residue of cries
             for help.
                Eyes unprepared for this
sort of wreckage.
        The maggots demarcate the space
between what was & never will be
           again.
            Steel door hinges split at the seam.
  Every wall, a groundswell of lusterless green.
Glass has meandered
       across the floor,
           a cacophony of shattered skin.
          The overturned dinner table
       sits on its side
             as if to protect the rest of the house
from the night it knows will come.
         The floorboards do not creak,
                   they whimper—
   distraught by all they could not prevent.

II.

But what are these words
but an empty lyric?
What then is anything,
beyond the language we give it? What else do we have
to describe the carnage we see
but all that is woefully inadequate?