Counting Down the Breaths

It hung there on the wall counting breaths, faithless of the next ever coming
a faceless enigma of interpretation waiting for an improbability.
How quaint.

It's the rise of sun in the north western quadrant
the sun burning like a blazing, bleeding she-devil over the sands.
A breath?

A beat?

A single tear from the closed eye of the dead and buried
her salt soaks the earth with the derision of ill-timed knowledge.
And none.

Breaking from the everyday heat and stench,
Fetidness coats your tongue, matted spit on your lips turning white
Not yet.

And when hell opens up to swallow you whole
curling into itself in hunger and greedy salivation,
neck arched.

Open mouthed, loathing absence and abhorring presence,
struggling to keep lungs in check through the burn and the blister.
A beat?

A breath?

Still none, not yet, because with your neck arched you beg for life
from the clutching mouths of the demons you don't see
They blister and they burn and they suck you dry.
Hang your hollow head
and breathe.