Awakening
We were still alive when they dug our grave. At least in the minds of those who knew us.
It wasn’t until weeks after calls went unreturned and lights stopped turning on that our loved ones even knew we were gone.
We are still, but we don’t rest. Not with the cacophony of those who still draw breath so callously living out their days above us. We hear their joys and their sorrows, their whispers and their secrets, the lies that they live with and the ones that kill them, yet we are unmoved.
Unmoved but still slightly … sentient. We remember what blood was and how it felt in our now broken veins. We remember the feel of our flesh in each other’s hands, and the curve of our spines when we cradled each other. We remember happiness, just as we remember the sun that will never grace our skin again. A watercolor image, all overlapping hues and illusions of warmth.
What did we do wrong? We ask ourselves again and again. We worked hard, we showed reverence to God and all her children, respecting even those who had not earned it. And for this, our bones were swallowed by the earth before they were spent, making us a bitter crop that would never bear fruit. All that grew from our lonely plot was anger. We spat out cold air and sucked the nutrients from seeds. Over time all sounds of life, whether joyous, grievous, or in between, diminished. A darkness persisted between winters and loneliness set in.
We don’t know how long we were dormant, feeding on the darkness when the noise began. There was a violent clanging of metal and the powerful reverberations of something tearing apart the earth. Our dark prison was shattering, bringing with it a succession of memories of our last days, and bitterness once again gathered inside us like a storm, waiting to make landfall.
