The camp
As for @wakeupkitty, I couldn't help but post—especially on a birthday. Happy birthday.
I can disappear among the streets and the asphalt of your city. You have architecture and photographs, landscapes, bicycles and windmills.
The pelicans follow the foolish cycle of every year.
We escaped from the camp. They were still torturing people and mistreating the dogs.
The cockroaches were cultivated, like any other food. It was disgusting, but it was honest work, as someone once said. You could pay your bills and give yourself a little breathing room at the end of the month. You could buy a stale bag of potatoes and sing songs of war.
You had a small space in the camp. Gabo said it was quite a luxury to have a roof over our heads. Someone else can afford it. Someone has come into the little corridor and dipped two fingers of his hand into someone’s porridge. This is what you call good food.
Everyone remains silent, and the glow of the fireflies redraws our space.
Someone suggested abandoning it. Putting some rags on the bed to make it look as though we had escaped, or whatever. It was not safe to leave; it was not safe to stay.
The morning was a whisper and a hell of mosquitoes. We crossed a small swamp full of worms. We had better look for gold along the banks of the rivers.
We walked all morning. Every step we took made us doubt. The mind is a deep pond. Chaotic.
Someone broke the silence, and the group moved their eyes in the same direction.
We can go back. Being locked up is better than starving to death.
I remembered the past like a daguerreotype hanging in a museum. It was part of history. It was part of memory.
I slowly lowered myself onto the damp ground. It had been a long time since I had felt grass. Its texture and its smells. The smells came back to me. All the smells of that moment. That imperceptible wave of shades and flavors.
I remembered that once I had a little house on the hill, a woman whose belly kept growing. Constantly, her belly kept growing. The world revolved around her, a halo protected her. An angel constantly circled around her.
I remember sunflowers, storms, and a dog barking at the far end of the endless cornfield. The sky was leaden. Absent.
Shots rang out. People ran in every direction.
But my life was that black hole born from the soul. That rots, that resonates like groaning metal.
This was my time. They brought dogs and death.
The smell of gunpowder reached me from every direction.
No one was going to tear me away from the soft grass. Grass twisting beneath the movement of my hands.
I lay still upon the earth after they had beaten me.
I closed my eyes and remained forever in the afternoon.
Watching the dogs and the belly that kept growing.
Watching a luminous halo approaching from the horizon.
Perhaps it was death. I prefer to think it was peace.
Image created by me, based on a prompt in chatGPT and Qwen Ai.
It’s been a very long time since I last felt the grass beneath my bare feet. The grass is rare, but still there, yet at the same time it has become a hazard. Shards of glass, tin, stones, bits of iron, rusty nails, and the creatures living amongst them, particularly ticks, which you’d rather not be bitten by, not to mention the humid breeding spots where the mosquitoes lurk amongst the tall grass.
Yes, we can go back and at least not die of hunger because there are still cockroaches, but the monotonous taste is starting to get on our nerves and the hunger keeps gnawing away. Chewing on the hard shells doesn’t help to drive it away, it makes us cough and triggers allergies.
Worms, on the other hand, are edible; if there are still birds, then somewhere, sometime, there are still eggs. I know a good protein rich recipe of worms and eggs mixed and cooked by the sun.
Live and let live is a hollow phrase.
It’s not so bad to die under a rain of beatings, as long as your head rests on the earth; the grass can be smelled and no longer feels threatening.
That belly growing is merely a memory of the past, and the dog, those dogs still alive, not used in a recipe, left and saved their skin. They have vanished into thin air, like the pelicans and potatoes. They are in places where they all defend themselves against intruders and beatings.
Dying in freedom sounds better than dying in captivity without anything to eat or any the prospect of a future, and the clock ticks on; time marches on relentlessly. Without inspiration to at least create one’s own bubble and experience this beauty, what is the point to celebrate life?
No way to start new. Be more fortunated, loved.
Only the birds fly from east to west, from north to south, and have little to endure; they are not shot down… until someone decides that they are the cause of all the misery and a threat to public health.
The void increases.
P.S. I’ve dug everywhere, lifted every paving stone, there’s not a worm to be found. All life in Mother Earth has vanished.
The last moth has just been killed by my neighbour’s hand. With that, the last scrap of rags I own has been saved.
The pouring rain continuous saving pretending wiping non existing tears.
Maravilloso. Como todo lo que escribes. Bonito día.
Suele decirse que una vida nueva trae esperanza. Pero cuando estamos dominados por las guerras tal vez traiga más llanto, más desesperación y más muerte. Has descrito un escenario sórdido, que nos embarga de dolor. Un abrazo.