"Alchemy" -- Amanda

Take all the stars.
Take the elements of suns and moons
Drawn in chalk to pursue
Perfect alchemy.
The fire consumes
Impurity.
Something ordinary can acquire
Unpredicted beauty.
And white flames will burn clean
When two becomes three.

There's no exaltation.
No purity. No salvation.

There is
No hope in ashes;
Grey and black.

When smoke
Clears, all that's left is
Burned and black.

The light of the sun and its virtue
Shines through but does not come from within.
Therefore do philosophers call their stone,
The whole world made of the same Chaos.

Speak not of fiction but
That which is certain as
Truth dies in embers
Glowing with false hope.