Make a city into its composite parts – scraps of wood, slivered, riven, scattered; cement in serrated blocks, piles of blocks in chunks in acres. Iron in heaps — tank hulks stinking of flesh. Clay fountained from shell holes. A wreckage of streets no longer streets. Smoke and the stench of it, frozen blood thawing and the stench of it, cordite, shit, rot. Wind whistling in a dozen keys through holes that had been whole. No bird song. Voices, soft or wailing or silenced.
Make the dead the dead by subtraction of respiration, of blood beating through valves. Subtraction makes graves in yards.
Make fetters from white linen torn roughly and tied about the hands wrenched back.
Make a map of the dead. Make red squares showing the GPS of their murders:
5 men in a basement, a woman in a garden, a man who went out for bread, a mother shot next to her daughter.
Cover the face. Cover the face.
At least that.
Follow the map of the dead:
2 brothers found in brush, one body in a street, in a pit, crumpled in a doorway. A body, beheaded.
Bodies, beloved.
Cover the face. Cover the face. Collect the arms. Collect the legs.
At least that.
Bring them to a place where others will say their names — Dearest. My Dearest. Our One Unlike Another. Cherished. Most Cherished. Beloved. Beloved. Beloved.
At least that.
© Mike Wall
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