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note her passing without a word and then hiss asides to their loved ones: She's gone crazy! They say she caught the fever… This place is nothing like the place she grew up -- not now, not a day before. And yet the street signs remain, having somehow survived the blasts, jutting out in clinical black and white, and she has used them as her guide, for the names of the streets have improbably stayed the same, through ruling parties and the disintegration of history. The signs lead her away, beyond the town's collapsed outer walls, the central guard towers crumpled on the ground like discarded toys, out to the fields where the fruit and vegetables once grew. She limps through the scorched earth, espies a single human head where the squash once poked through the ground. The eyes in the head are dark where  |
they had been burned out -- they must have gazed directly upon the explosion -- and yet the teeth sparkle white and beautiful, as if they have been sanded clean. She cannot hear cicadas or other insects. This is the end for her; she is aware of it without knowing quite how. The survivors with their fingers and noses skinned by the heat, already ballooning with infection, would cackle at such a statement -- Nothing wrong with that one, she just needs some food, they would say. But each time her foot touches the ground her body grows more rigid. It is like it is hardening, like rock, and soon it will be easier to just sit or lie down, and that position will be no doubt too comfortable to budge from. And there she will stay, choking on the ashes that are still settling everywhere, like frost.  |
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