All That Falls to the Ground
The snows come early this year. A little earlier than the last. The flakes softly cover the ruins. In a few years, there’ll be nothing but cold. Maybe for the best.
My sisters are young, their hands little. Their memory made of rubble. I still remember bluebells. Peeking through the edge of the woods like cautious fairies. It’s been cut away for firewood now. Blackened down to the dirt.
I stare at the moon, pieces of it drifting away into the black. Only ever further away. The forever of that distance makes my chest ache.
Sleep is guilt. The temptation of exhaustion is too heady. More alluring than cherry wine. I let it steal my time away from me. But it is a thief of goodness too. Moments I could spend giving my sisters anything bright. I’m sorry, I whisper in my head after I jolt awake to tuck them into their apple crates.
I sleep close to the window so that I am the first to hear of danger. I trace my fingertips down the frosted glass. Tears dripping down to the dusty trim.
The day after tomorrow. It’s a thought I tuck in close, curl myself around. A day when bellies are full and we can see our family again; when we can sit around the fireplace and we can listen to the cracking embers because the night can be silent.
I drift to sleep listening to the familiar rumbling in the distance.
A sound like the world ending rips through the room. We cough up dust and look around at the cold stealing inside. The wall is missing.
I take their hands in mine and we make ourselves small. It isn’t hard to do. We are small.
Our eyes watch in soundless fear. Where is our place in this redrawn world of tall bodies and heavy boots?
Singing rises defiant in the distance. Grand, desperate carols lifting higher than the rising smoke. It is beautiful and something older than this new age. I turn my face toward the sound of their voices.
And then I am missing. The cold street is against my cheek. The snow melts quickly under my skin. Little hands flutter over me. Tug at me. My sisters’ faces swirl in the smoky wind. The thin morning light shines through their cheekbones. They are disappearing. And then I am alone. I remember now.
My thoughts are bluebells, bending toward the ground. I see the pamphlets released from the sky, clumping in the gutter. I see the shoes of our soldiers marching by, too afraid to look at their faces. I see my sisters, painted orange by the fire, drawing with charcoal on the floor. Bodies and crumbs and bullet casings and flour and rubble and petals and I, resting on the ground.
