The Walk

The road spread out bleakly before me like a dried corpse withered and shrunken.  How long had I trudged along, the sullen dust choking me like the ashes of a crematorium.
The sun rested heavily upon my shoulders like the weight of a cross laughing at my humanity.  The burden of its adiposity hammering me occasionally to my knees.
Head bowed I studied my feet, amazed how they shuffled on of their own volition.  A charnel breeze lethargically surrounded me, somehow more oppressive than the dead emptiness it replaced.  
Raising my eyes fractionally, a brilliant splash of magenta pulls me in and draws me to the edge of the pathway.  A single red rose grows in this world of browns and grays.  
Its sweetness combines with the wind to fill my nostrils with the putridness of decay.  Plucking it cleanly from the earth I try to focus on its vibrancy to save me.  
But the color washes away and the petals wither and fall carelessly to the ground.  The thorns, like talons, leap out, raking my flesh.
I stare in silent fascination as my lifeblood drains away, soaking into the parched soil at my feet.  As the last drops drain away, they disappear, not beginning to slake the thirst of the path I travel.  
And as the husk of me slowly tumbles to the trail I shatter into a hundred billion motes, like the film left by time and emptiness.

Oh well, I knew I was never meant for this journey anyway.