Lauren K. Watel – Here We Are

“Here we are at last, meeting face-to-face like two heroes of opposing armies, looking each other in the eye, poised to shake hands. Do you trust me? Do I trust you? No, trust died last century, along with truth, so we’ll have to think of something else to shake on. Not to our health. Our health is bad and only getting worse. Not to our wealth, because no amount of riches could heal our poverty. Not to you and yours. Not to me and mine, because yours and mine, every last one, perished in the wars, and without yours there is no you, and without mine there is no me. Just two bodies standing face-to-face, two envelopes of flesh with nothing folded inside. How did we survive? And better yet, how did we emerge heroic after all that carnage, all that betrayal and heartbreak? Loss for every meal, loss before bedtime and on rising. That’s why we’re empty, because emptiness made us, made these bodies in which we stand, high on the hilltop, under a pallid moon, with the fields of bones surrounding us like a fresh snowfall, except that the heat here is insufferable. Last winter was years ago, before the battles broke out, remember? Here, let’s shake on that. To winter. To cold. To snow, real snow.”