Behind Those Mountains
#6 of Other
We are the ones who leave.
Humans aren't made to think in facts and truths. Instead, they think in symbols -- and even more obscurely, they think in stories about symbols.
BEHIND THOSE MOUNTAINS
Where were they when the sun settled behind those mountains dressed in smoke and dust?
That small stream of shimmering water, finding its way past cultrate rocks and blackened tree trunks.
Did they ever wonder where the river went once it had disappeared in the shadows of the trees, its shimmer veiled by undergrowth?
Did it ever meet the sea? Or did it lose itself in the colorless sands of barren lands?
Its vivid gurgle turned into silent, sluggish mud?
They said a black bird carried the twig of an ash tree.
A little sign of things to come, a haunting tale to put the children back to sleep.
But they didn't care.
They took the twig and watched it wither.
They took the feathers and plugged them on their doors.
They took the bones and weaved them into little toys.
The children giggled.
A tiny theater of ribcage dolls, smiling pale faces in moldy varnish.
Where were they when the shadows fell on those little bodies?
When the air tasted like burned skin and when I felt hairs on my tongue that didn't belong to me?
Did they ever wonder if those tales escaped their tiny beds?
Or did they remain as vacant thoughts and dead dreams, hovering over those cradles, like dry flies in a dusty spider net?
I still see those houses at the edge of the forest, where the river still flows, swallowed by undergrowth.
I still feel the time that's buried there with them.
A withered twig on a porch, twitching in the wind.
Is this what was meant to be?
Did they live and long and loathe, only to find those sands they've inherited?
I watch them still, and they watch me.
We both know.
© 2018, Kranich im Exil