i walk through the valley of the shadow of death. benji
Jan 4, 2023 13:23:31 GMT -5
Post by fox on Jan 4, 2023 13:23:31 GMT -5
my old neighbour believed in the Rapture during all the years i've known him. the Lord is coming! he'd say on the porch in the afternoon sun. i saw him asleep in that rocking chair, overlooking the plain of green and the open sky, as if he'd be closer to the heavens when the time came to meet his lord. gran said his lungs were filled with water. when he coughed, i thought i could hear the sea.
we lived in the landscape of abandoned development, the remnants of industry, where the water was poison, and the ground was a mouth. billboards heralded the suburbs, the words peeled off right to the bones. the politicians hid the bodies in our backyards. the dandelions told a story. the story was of the earth.
maybe the end was here, years ago. we waited for death before death knew of us.
i saw my neighbour in that old chair, out in the sun. his body was cold, blood spit from his mouth, veins of blue crawled from his cheeks. the 'keepers came like ghosts wearing white. they burned him, they buried him, blackened and shriveled in a grave by the creek, foaming with chemicals. they took people into the city in vans. the road was sealed off.
on the third night of the plague, he woke again. and clawed his way from the dirt. there were no trumpets or angels with their six wings and sharpened teeth. it was just the bugs chirping by the water, the leaves in the wind. he came and called it resurrection, on a starless night. i saw him. his face was charred to the skull.
in Love Canal, the first man hungry for life here was dead.
