Pool_2

ruins. You, I, all of us clinging to precious tokens, reminders, mementos, notes of what was on the far side of that debris. With these imperfections we conjure our past in incantation to the trickery of thrown voices of augurs and their illusory floating tables. Truth becomes whatever salves as retrospection gropes in the dark.

Through veils of pain, revelation, wisdom, and ignorance, we do not see yesterday free from untinted tomorrows. We merely feel the chill of distance. Old and older things struggle to reanimate in tired breaths of retelling.

God! There are so many things I can only remember remembering. And damn! I cannot see faces. There are none there. Gray silhouettes at best. I cannot draw expressions on such dimly lit casts of my past. So many countenances without illumination. They are lost to me. So many shadows.

So many.

One.... She was burned, nearly half of her, to coal. A woman charred so badly, one of her legs just broke off and fell bloodlessly. In horror, we sanctified her distress with electric saws cutting deep signs of the cross into her bituminous chest. Unthrottled lungs then heaved her only words, 'Let me die.' Barely heard, but heard - and heeded. She knew. Her only chance was death.

Thanatos, standing nearby, always quiet, an empty hooded figure, waiting patiently. We gave her over to Death as Death placed its empty sleeve gently upon her.