It's Still Life

The Book of 27, The 20th Glyph: Cindertide –
Anger that forgot what it was fighting

I. The First Flame
It begins sharp—
a flash of fire with a name, a face, a reason.
This is for the child I lost,
for the cradle I never filled,
for the syrup I will never pour.
But fury is a poor craftsman.
It builds nothing.
It only burns.

II. The Turning Tide
Then the wave rises—
not to cleanse, but to claim.
It crashes long after the storm is gone,
scattering embers where meaning used to live.
Cindertide is the anger that forgets its enemy
and feasts on the shore that held it.

III. The Aftermath
Smoke without flame.
Ash without spark.
A mother’s love curdles into control.
A sister’s grief curdles into isolation.
The toilet stall becomes a chapel of salt —
a sanctuary where sorrow
kneels alone, praying
in languages of almost
and never.

IV. The Erosion
It was never about the syrup.
It was about the womb that remained empty
and the heart that filled itself with shrapnel.
Cindertide does not destroy the target—
it pilots the hand that holds the weapon.

V. The Glyph Unmade
This mark is not carved in ink,
but in bone-deep fatigue—
the kind that makes a home in the joints,
that whispers, “You are ruin without a cause,”
until you believe it.

VI. The Revelation
May the tide recede.
May the ash settle.
May there be a kinder sun
where grief is honoured,
not weaponised.