Out of the Rift (Sequel to The Shifting Cliff)

The tiny man climbed the ladder of words outside his shoddy barn.
It reached over the gable of his rough hewn home,
and into the whistling winds that circled over his dandelion pastures.

There had never been a day where he had not climbed this ladder,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where sunburnt seeds
did not flit around the shingles that hung haphazardly,
yet somehow today was different.

There had never been a day where he did not glimpse the small man grow immense,
rise to the shutters of the sky, shake and shudder the horizon,
and watch words burst from cracked cliffs like apples tumbling from an orchard tree,
yet somehow today was different.

The tiny man reached the final rung of his ladder,
and gazed down tiredly at his paper house,
then turned his muttering mouth like a drum's day-beat
and began his own chant,
as the sun squeezed its last sunshine like a dripping orange onto the immense rift.

With his chant's cadence rising,
out of the rift rose melancholy, even as the falling day's light cut glorious shadows amongst his trees.
Through the rift a ribboned road, traveled by few, known by fewer, unraveled.
Above the rift a ribboned blue sky peeled backwards and into it's own arms,
splotching blue stains across the fields where the tiny man's crops lay slumbering.
Inside the rift a small man atop a ladder leaned on a paper house,
singing a mournful dirge where once words lay tumbled and jumbled on paper walls.