The stone hardens into silence now, a burning kind of cold. The ash drifts upon the breeze, a weightless kind of gold. A thousand years of salt settle on the bended knees. We find the broken tooth nested in the core of the trees. The story wears a skin that fits the skeleton so well — A living kind of tomb, a silent kind of bell. Scrape the lichen back. The spore hardens, dry and small. A fossilized routine hangs beneath a clouded pall. We stack the temple high with bricks of ancient clay. The meaning haunts a ghost that vanished in the day — Build to unbuild. Climb to descend. Stepped construction: brick on brick on brick, world without end. Into the Hive of dust, into the leaden sun. The pattern locks complete, the ritual has begun. We honor every ruin, we worship every grave. The master claims the dead, the living serves the slave. Restore the gilded frame. The image hollows to a hush. A ritual of ghosts haunts all we have destroyed. The Hive builds out of dust. The honey hardens into lead. The living only serve the core of the dead. The frame. The hush. The ash — the floor — of all we — destroyed the Spore. The Spore begins to bloom, a pale and sterile flower. The past denies a path. The past becomes a tower. We march in circles now. The pattern locks complete. The ruin claims a throne. The salt rests on the meat.
