Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
-T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
City smells no longer clinging to cloth or skin, the din and crash of that stinking symphony reduced to a fading echo.
Silence is now filled with the creak and whisper of wind through branches and leaves. Graveyard quiet. Ice slides down the spine.
The smell of old pennies and voided bowels drifts across the matted grass like a sly punk; posturing, threatening, but impotent in everything but the bad, bad dreams.
Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins...have all emptied themselves in this place. The silence of their shrieking ghosts is made all the more hideous by the sudden clang and whine of massive air-handlers.
But grim tragedy is blunted by the same silence.
No life was sold cheaply, here. Not in the end.
*smile wickedly*
And those who paid this final butcher's bill, paid in full.
Ease the pack from your shoulders, straighten the spine.
Welcome home.
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