Handmade signs bob up and down in the streets. Thousands of feet roar forward. Ahead march thousands more. The most despicable words of our language are hurled, scribbled, plastered, brandished as weapons. The hearts of those on the hateful front lines sputter and shake, lost in frenzy.
A girl, fifteen, pushes along with her people. She has fought to be here. She braved an icy river when she couldn’t swim, her head sliding below the violent surface to quiet below. She was pulled out so that she could brave miles upon miles of scorching desert only to freeze at night, huddled together against stone. And she hid when the white trucks flew upon them, and tore her family away. She hiked on wearing bloody feet so that she could change their fortune, her mind locked on to that final moment when her father’s eyes held hers.
Across from her, a man spits as he screams. His eyes are black and pinpointed. She sees a shark across from her, fists clenched, wrinkled white skin brandishing a sign that goes against everything she had ever heard about this place, but that follows everything she has seen since arriving. “What kind of fortune is this?” she asks herself, “How could my children live with those eyes hating them so?”
He’s five feet away. Screaming unintelligibly before her. The weight of a rock sits heavy in her hand. She could end him. She wants to. He wouldn’t see it in time. Her arm would raise and fall and the stone would crush his brittle bone and destroy one more agent of hate. But that would create one too. She remembers her father. She remembers her mother, and her sister. She sees their faces in the crowd watching over her. She drops the rock and looks the man in the eye with a pride he will never know.
It’s been three hours in the dim upper halls and he has read three pages. The tip of his finger taps away at the corner of the book he’s staring at. He stares so that he won’t. Behind him a door opens and closes. The sound resonates up and down the hall for no one to hear. He smiles. It is faint, hardly recognizable. He exhales and stretches his shoulders. Stands and turns. The door is five feet from him. A sign reads:
Sheet Music Library
It’s more of a closet. He’s hesitant to reach for the knob on the heavy wooden door, but once he takes hold he rips the door open. A woman waits for him, a large ring on her finger. “You shouldn’t have come,” he says, but even now he’s grinning and stepping forward. She pulls a string and the lights go out. They study Beethoven together when no one is watching.
Photo by Tyler
Strange at the world something so fine falls into place. That the Sun and the breeze are just right. That the market is happy and lively. That I get to walk beside you and hear you laugh. That you look back and smile at me, I wonder at my good fortune. I hold the basket as you go through tomatoes. I can’t help but marvel at your grin and your knowledge. Your ideas that sprout every moment. I walk. Every face is a blur. The crowd is as the trees and the tents are. They’re all just background I’m wandering through, aimless. But then I see you in that red dress walking down the stone path and I have direction. Never strange that you are so fine to me.
They called him a fool—the idiot with shitty shoes and eyes that look upwards too often. He called on the gods in the old way. Believed in the many. He was never angry and always awestruck. As they filed in to feel guilt and remorse, he walked under the trees, loving nature’s chapel and the world about him. While men with black books stood on boxes and hollered about judgment, he wondered without. “Witchcraft!” they said, and they tied him to the stake. They lit torches and claimed God’s will and he asked, “which?”