I shook you
awake; the familiarity of each other’s bodies had no come to the point of
romance, let alone attraction for one another. I barely finger your arm as you
awakes, estranged from the surroundings enclosing us in. The glare in your eyes
was one I had not seen. Don’t help her,
my gut said, step away from this lady
with careless independence; you are not worth the death threat. But as I
shifted my potential moving, you grabbed hold of me. As if to say, don’t tell
me how awful the world really is, I’m blinded by the fact you care, I've seen
this before. I know the ending. You moved and I pressured you again, “Get up or
you will die.” You blinked at my enforcing character, the leader I was never
obligated to become. A faint whisper escaped your lips, “I can’t.”
It was quiet
that day; bombs began to fall, uttering from the gray blue skies. One month
before the rest of the world had received the same notion to take advantage of
the United States namesake. The silence of most days blended in with each other
as if each moment was a wrecking ball of coincidental justice. A materialistic
covering had been invented, thus blending the sly explosives to their outside
environments, making it visible to the blind eye. They began dropping on our
homeland, beating the other realms cry, to claim our nation’s soul as something
other than free and respected. Knocking us off our feet, the government
insisted we go quietly, not making too much hullabaloo about this decision.
Where our freedom of speech had gone and our right to face our betrayers in a
line of accusers, vanished and we had no rights to defend. You could hear the
quaint whistling sound, seemingly to bring a small portion of peace to the
people in the aim of fire.
We were
standing on opposite sides of the train tracks. You stood upon them, staring
deep into me as if I was to be blamed for this catastrophe. I heard the train
coming; the earth shook beneath my working footprints. Trains captivated you,
how they rumbled down one main course of passageway. They were constant beings
in a world of mixed and matched harmonies of change. Fluctuated movements in a
millennium we could not begin to name. The shapes of the clouds ran along the
dirt road as we tried to guess which one belonged to whichever shape still
coexisted with our names. Their shadows weren’t dark, but the edges gave us
momentary relief from the hot desert heat. We had no idea what was at the end
of this long road. We came to the conclusion it was best not to acknowledge the
end of it. An event like this would
bring a family close together, a closing image of a group hug, would be long
awaited in this turmoil. The erosion of the exotic places had taken effect
precisely. The Grand Canyons stood upside down as a mountainous cavern; the
ending militia used it as a leveling ground, what they called the cleanup
project.
Generations of deceased corpses
lay down among the river’s edge. Tossed merely like an unheard Holocaust,
mashed between levels of unseen lovers and unheard democrats. Who I wondered,
would I be stacked against? Eventually, we would end up holding the hands of
our enemies, because in the end we were given the same sentencing, a lifeless
one. The only really thing we had left to hold onto was, a name we couldn’t
share.
The start of
all the destructive behavior came like a slap in the face to a young man's
curse words. We all saw it coming, but after the fact, we sat silently
wondering why it had happened, what we had done do wrong. Hurt, by the elders
before us, taking no consideration for the being of our wellness. The campaign
of our leaders led us to believe the fault was upon our rugged shoulders. That
somehow our words and opinions had created all the chaos that was brought to
the nation. As if the man in power had given up and shredded his unlimited
power on the refugees of sarcasm.
You were
there, her, a Goddess reborn into a new human form. You gazed down behind me,
as if to pick up the lifeless person beyond my trembling figure. I was
adjusting my perception to your outlook; I didn’t know who I was anymore. Then,
again did anybody else these final days, when they would catch a glimpse of
their faces overflowing with oil smudged tears. Filling up with not only
frustration and anger, but also regret and weakness began to spread like yawns
on Sunday evening. Did it even matter the explosion went off, maybe we were all
the same, tide pools of people no one seemed to warn or care enough to save. We
were the fold, after all what did we have to look forward to anymore or live
for; I stood in the closing stages of mankind’s pursuit, the concluding factor
of a brotherly tale betrayal and unremorseful circumstances.
By the end
of the bitter dry month, our nation's capital stood 3ft above the ground,
Pike's Fish market, sat among the dust blowing into the Pacific Ocean air.
Every major city had been intended, hit, and declared dissolved. We graveled
not in a place of mercy, a place of harmony, or a place abandoned of safety.
Instead, the nation’s people stood upward, moving forward, we were mere
survivors, unable to tell the story of destruction. No warnings of the
accidents were given. We had no challenge or progress to run and hide away from
the enemies that had become not foreign, but fellow. Rebels, chaos creators,
and free thinkers took care of the individuals whose ungodly actions, we seemed
to have been pushed and prodded in front of, as if the responsibility lay upon
the weakest link in a chain of mercenaries. Making them see the suffering, we
were all presented. Our punishment was not their pain; rather their misguided
mistakes had caused us our own introductory of humiliations.
You had a
light that glowed like the moon. Your soul seemed like a dark alley you
distracted yourself far from. Your name was nothing, but anything it wanted to
be; nonetheless I did not own it as a possession. Black hair filtered out of
your head, like straight DNA strips of obscure splendor; some unique viral
disease, yet to be determined by geneticists. Maybe, your name was just the
same, misunderstood and somehow peculiar. Rather a chaotic beauty, than a
classic one. With a face like Yours You really didn’t need a name for it. Your
soul created its own milieu, a world outside of its own. A world I wasn’t
familiar with flashed across your weary face.
Your aroma flummoxed me in such a way I couldn't tell if it was the
faint smell of fading roses or just the dying ones.
The world
was a different place now; feelings had been subdued into the idea of being
numb and nonexistent. Times played by the marks of the old dying moon. Tidal
waves were unrealistic to the daily tsunamis happening around the coastal
lands. We had safety, but no struggle for survival. For best protection, stay
in the mainland’s of the western states. The Nevada Desert was the option I had
randomly selected for me to benefit from. Once a dead land always seemed to
stay as such. Eventually, the last remaining would flee to the crowded borders,
coming back from once we all come from a differentiation of lands. Earthquakes
shake the glass windows and scatter their presence upon the empty terrace.
You stood
oblivious to the rumble of the c haos. Your very mind stood in the midst of the
dying world. You weren’t saddened by the fact the only home you ever knew was
falling before your, crumbling down to the ruins we all assumed were only in
the history of our father’s generations. You stood there in a wandering awe,
why Mother Nature was acting in such a temperamental way or why she had
neglected to protect her encompassed soul. The off balance of the axis rotated
its happiness around us as the sun beamed in its good morning charms of
sometime solitude.
Us, as a
community had no point in fighting. The army was disbanded, but given an
ultimatum and evidently chose to stay in plain sight. By the end of it all,
there was no point to strike again. The population diminished in a matter of
microseconds, and here I stood one of the last to survive. An engineer, by
trade, a man none the less of score, I was determined to live out of hotels and
never settle down to America’s ideal plan of living. But, by the end of every
world way, I sat perched on my tiptoes, wondering when Miss Miracle would come
walking down the alley to me, out of the blackness of my past, the soul. But,
she never came and suddenly I’m here striding beside you, wondering why I was
given a last chance at life with someone so delicate and uncontrollable, as
you. Well, of course that was before the oil spills and gas prices rose,
evidently we all ended up drowning in the blood of manmade machinery.
The world
had become debt collectors, come to demand the ransom we put on our own heads.
America was deemed to fall, the blame fell upon the heads of your once
idolized, and honorable comrades. Who had failed your message of freedom, once
again? Trust was placed in the hands of a greedy man who giddily made promises
and ran away with our joy. Our trust was built by some type of precious gold, a
material unrealistic in the account it could not buy happiness. Some type of
treasure auctioned off to the highest bidder, with the most persuasive
corruption and figurine of power.
Ashes would
suggest that someone once lived here, maybe, a house, a plant or two, a person
or few. Flowers lay side by side among no real platforms of the evidence that
once belonged here. Colossal, would have been the waste. Endless is the time
and energy needed to pick up and put back together an old society of comfort.
Days and weeks went by and in many cases the lost items of valuables was the
increasing ritual of mourning, as if their dirty tears could bring back the
things we had all lost. Our hope, most of all shared a bed with the wreckage of
homes and houses. All that seems to be left are flat grounds, shifting by the
shady leaves, as unwanted dirt particles danced under the tuck of the sunrise.
Your voice
trembled, like an attic door that had not been open in several years. You
looked at your reflection in the daunting waters as you tried producing a type
of language we would all understand one day, hope and love. You wondered if
something had changed, maybe you had grown significant over night. Maybe, you
finally mattered to this human being. You stared up at the sky and wondered if
life measured up or were you just playing a game like the rest of us, a role
someone else had casted. You had a dialect; I had yet been accustomed too. Not
so much one that was being reborn, rather one that has always been alive. A
foreign language not yet ready to be forgotten, but not ready to become
embraced, either. When you spoke the words and phrases came out of your
lingering mouth like a quiet rhythm of unnecessary flutter, tied together with
foreseen riddles I would one day appreciate.
Gaping
insignificant holes lingered around the departed bodies of our time. We are
alone, as everybody else had figured. Control had faded, rules itemized to the
notion of periodic failure. The further other countries began rising in power,
the less we knew what we stood for anymore. The only realistic reason to
survive was prominent for the countenance of foreign aliens, taken mercy upon
the left behind. I chuckle at my joke; people clipped coupons while their
family members began to die beneath them. Nobody laughed, giggled or chanted in
a while. They kept hope, talking as if the end was near, as if it we were all
still awaiting such an arrival. What they didn't seem to notice was this was
the end, the very end. No comebacks, the restart button broken, as we sat in
the midst of the ashes of our own injurious minds. What will come of the
replenished words, I have once spoken to you. Who may hear the speeches I
professed to you about who was to end up glorified by the ending times of war
and hunger. Who else knew, besides you? I shall die alone in the triumph of my
own waves of courage and regrets.
A man with
two small children came running up to us yelling, “OU LA VILLE!? OU LA VILLE?” Meaning where is the village at. “Calme-toi?” Putting hands up as if to
communicate using mass finger signals to tell him to calm down. The deranged
middle aged man, clearly noting his insanity stopped in his proverbial tracks.
The word I should have used was, Vider,
which meant empty. But, what I pronounced to him was la desperation, for it had merely disappeared upon the new dew.
You kept
stumbling and I kept walking on what could have been territorial borders of
some noteworthy destination, once upon a different time. I wonder what small
infraction must be puncturing your hip. So many times I've turned around almost
wishing to see you running down the road to me as if you were not extinct like
the rest of them. Them, who are unable to evolve into this greater species of
tomorrow or whatever, came after the dusk of dawn. Whoever thought I would be
one of the tag along to survive one of these mass explosions, and you’re with
your mute words as if you was dropped here by mistake to survive. I, believe they
were mistaken, when they pointed and picked he shall live, let that one go on
his own way. As a child, I was poked as a weakling, unwilling to defend against
those who cast the last pebbles.
We are the
very last, but then again we sit at the very tips of the fingering options of
the very beginnings. We were all that was left, saved for death or things
alike. At first all I saw was a wave of black and there I was flooded by a leak
of oil, in the middle of North Dakota; catching the empty breaths in the
misfortune of not only the Capital’s supply, but my own. An epidemic had broken
out and here we were pushed in the middle of it all left behind to fight an
invisible battle we all had no intentions of defending, let alone supporting.
We walked
and with great stride reaching the river front. The dawn of the day had struck
earlier this numeric year. The time wasn't evident, but we know not to keep
track. Endless days filled the streams between moments and seconds of time we
once knew or had once owned. People scanned down the aisle, like we had reached
the new land, Eden. The edgy volcanic ash fell through my rough fingertips like
the falling waters of a rain storm. The sky had become grey, the stream line of
new aged birds gave us little hope things were promised for change. A single small white flower popped up between
the rubbish, finally we all seemed to see the sky for what it really was; an
opening.
You
whispered in my ear, to speak ever so closely with me. But, all you placed in
the curvature of my ear lobe was a warm kiss. The brush of curiosity rushed
upon my cheek bone, a delicate touch so secretive that it had to have been by
mistaken, not considering the options of being physical with such an obscure
women in my defense. Although, your place here was not entirely hidden, your
behavior and motives showed you were stronger than the rest of us; after all
maybe you were here, the one to save us, even me.
-S.M. Bjarnson
