April Flash #11 (catchup, retrograde)

based on prompts by:

Haredawg: Tuna Bricks and hard biscuits; Fear wist not evade as love wist to pursue

Amygdala: red and green lanterns; snow country; every stone has a number;

The feel of this place since the great war has changed. It’s marked a silence like the grave, so many unmarked and calls of the dead unanswered. Every stone here has a number, if not a name – you could walk for miles in this snow country and never see them all – get lost in the tangled up rows, roots piling off of tangled trees and imagined losses. Not even the birds would flock here, now. It has the lingering atmosphere of gunshots, of roaring campfires, banjos plucking the blues in the background to the banter of thousands of eager soldiers, ready for what the next day would bring, dangling red and green lanterns along the hill, a guiding light to those who would need no guidance after tomorrow. Its strange to think how quickly these things happen – one errant cannon blast, carving a plough in the dirt as you walk, kicking up rocks and debris in your face, then… nothing. Do you wonder what comes after in the hereafter? Or do you just appear there, mouth still full with the taste of last night’s dinner, tuna bricks and hard biscuits, dried out by the dusty march from North to South, the gnats lighting on your face and hands, exposed flesh. How long after did the grave diggers appear, when it was safe, with no more Minnie balls zinging like stinging bugs in the heat and humidity of summer. How long did you lay there on the grass, exposed to the elements before you were buried under it, leaving a number – but not your name. How many nameless bones lay scattered under this dirt and what were there last thoughts. Did they appreciate the sunshine that day? Did they smell the cotton on the air, the pollen swirling with the quickened pace of a thousand feet, did they hear the sound of spirituals being sung and did it give them a sense of peace? I wandered this place now in the dead of winter, white lines in the dirt. Some of the stones carried more than a number – they carried a sentiment or a piece of scattered poetry: “fear wist not evade as love wist to pursue” whatever that meant. Others carried humor, but the cracked stone was eroding away in droves, dripping down to the dirt, covered over in leaves and snow, waiting again for the summer. I came here, not to feel the weight of the silence, but to remember. Somebody had to remember these people from another time who gave everything for an idea that did not belong to them. And it was peaceful here, in the silence, in the unknowning. I sat on the edge of a bench and waited, inviting the spirits of the nameless to speak. I’d stay until they did. Maybe, all they really wanted for these long, silent years was for someone – anyone – to listen.

new prompts: sunflower mouths, assemblage of parts; disconcerting dichotomy.