It was quite a beautiful day. I had celebrated my 83rd birthday a few months ago. I was old, maybe a bit cranky, certainly not as young as I used to be. I felt it. My whole body felt it.
Simple things such as walking down the streets, or even cooking simple dishes took me far more time than it used too. So, I didn’t rush anymore. I watched the time go by and waited.
This day, I wore a simple blue work dress, tied in the back. The same dress I wore everyday, except when my only son came to visit me. I did not came as often, lately. With the war roaring, his time was precious and he certainly had better to do than visit an old woman like me. The material was rough and dry over my skin. I didn’t felt it anymore, since my own skin looked and felt more like brown leather. Daily life had made me a quite strange creature, I guess. I used to be young and soft and have pink cheeks which looked like cherry blossoms. And then I was brown and small, slightly out of shape, with a broken voice, and fingers like bones. Decades of hard work, the death of my husband years ago, my friends and family crossing the bridge before their time… Yet I liked seeing myself this way… I still tied my long grey hair in a bun, and smiled, no matter my missing teeth, and old the lines appearing on my face. Oh, yes, I smiled.
This very day, I was cooking curry noodles beside the window. Swirls of smoke in my small kitchen. I’m looking outside at the childs playing in the street. For a moment, I forget the war, the angst, and the insidious hunger. I’m cooking curry noodles, and even tho there’s nothing like curry nor vegetables in the pot, I stir it conscientiously, creating puddles and bubbles. I look outside and the time stretch itself. I which this moment who’d stay forever, stirring for eternity, looking blankly at life, in my small wooden kitchen.
And then it goes. The sound of the sirens. I will not run, cause I’ve stopped running years ago. I will not fight more my life, because my life has already been over for years. I expect the sound of bombs. I except the rumbling, the cries, the fire.
Instead of that, all there is is silence. A minute suspended, long and thin, going on forever. Then goes the blast. All I see is light, burning white light, so hard it makes me blind. And heat. A heat wave so strong I feel my body disintegrated, burned, destroyed, reduced to dust and melting flesh. All this I feel, my body being destroyed, while the terrible sounds makes me deaf. I am not scared. I know already nothing could have helped me. And then I’m dead. All I am is sad, for the childs on the other side on the window are dead with me, their little bodies reduced to nothing, but ashes and corpses.
This was 65 years ago. I’ve been long dead, and living other lives since then. Yet I still cry today.
