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Ghosts of a Lost World
~ and we must live ~
The outside world.
Do red and purple neon signs pierce hazy skies, still, and roadside cafes animate the night? Can laughter be heard as girls, buoyed by sunshine, excitement and expectancy walk to school? Is there really a world left out there? I will answer my own questions. There is. But not the one we lived in, forty odd days ago.
It is a mansion with Doric columns, a sweeping driveway and rolling lawns a little too overgrown. And in it, I am holding myself captive with the woman I wronged.
We go about the business — and it is serious business — of survival: we cook, we dream, keep watch and stay in the moment. We do this mostly wordlessly, though due to the dictates of necessity, we sometimes break the seal of a numb silence. For example, when we run out of water ( faucets dried up a week ago ) and one of us must go out to crank the gardener’s hand pump and fill buckets with brackish water. Our precious hand pump, giver of life. Or when the last candle sputters out, there is the usual instant of panic ( that’s one feeling repetition of which fosters no comfort zone ) and one of us steals out to the front gate with money to send out for more.
Candles have become a precious commodity, rationed out strictly by the limited number of shops that are intrepid enough to…
