On The Rubbles Of Our Home...

From The Rubbles Of Our Home...

 As the smoke clears, I see myself, left alone. Left amidst corpses. I see bodies around me, I see no signs of life, except for mine. I look towards the horizon, I see someone walking: moving towards destination, leaving behind remains and ruin. Her clothes are charred, torn and battered as she walks towards a green lush field. The sun will soon touch her as she walks towards a sturdy tree. I see a vague silhouette beside the tree but I can't get a clear picture, for they are too far. From where I am, she seems like a dancing toy from afar. Yet I can see the rhythm of her walk: skipping, excited, happy, hopeful. She seems to raise her right arm just when my sight starts to fail my eyes. She seems to be far from the silhouette. Is she waiting for it to hold her, or did it offer its arm to her, or maybe they're just so far that I can't make out what they are doing?

I give up dilating my pupils and focusing on her. Everything gets blurry for a moment, my eyes adjust. I look down to avoid the brightness of the lush sunny field. I see the ruin from where I stand. Dark, my eyes can relax. I look, I feel at home; yet why do I feel like I should not be here. Should I follow her to the green fields, or should I walk towards another direction? As my eyes relax, I feel a wet object touching my cheek to my chin. A droplet of water, yet it is not raining. My throat begins to feel slight pain, it tenses up. I involuntarily stop breathing for a moment, then makes way for a strong exhale. I feel like I'm losing air due to the sudden exhale, so I catch my breath. Then another droplet, this time it's warm. I look to the horizon around me, the world extends to as far as I can only imagine. I feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, I can walk at one direction and never reach its end. I look down, to the corpses around me. Droplets of warm water drop from my face. My breathing involuntarily inhales sharply. Am I crying? Without enough time to think, I look at the corpse at my foot. I recognize its face. He's crying. He died crying. I recognize his face so much I can't mistake him for anyone else. It's me. I see my corpse everywhere. Some of them are smiling, some are crying. Some look furious, some look happy. Scattered alongside my corpses, I see corpses of a woman. Mostly crying, hurt, hopeful yet failed. Broken trust, broken hope, broken happiness. I see us scattered, like masks of opera thrown to mess by an earthquake, trampled by stampeding people that rush to go outside hoping for safety. The rubble, the ruins, it's like the opera house fell, crumbled, destroyed. Then the debris got burned, scorched until it's unrecognizable. I see broken glasses, broken pillars, burned wood, burned walls. Thrown down ceiling, a complete pulverization, full destruction, something one can walk amidst but can never live in. I see, the rubble around me, it was our home. I lived here, I still do. She did, but now she left. We played house in a broken down ruins. She decided to stand and look towards the green lush fields and never hesitate and never look back. She did though, only to wave her goodbyes to me. I stayed, I stand here, in the middle of our broken down home.

I look at my hand. It's dirty, it's wounded, it's full of charred dust. I still feel the warmth of the fire. I still feel the pain of the backlash when I pounded every pillar with my sledgehammer. I still feel the vibration of my flamethrower when I burned this house down. Yes, I did, yet I hesitate to leave. I want to walk, follow her lead but on another direction. I have no one else here, but the corpses. The corpses that I made, the "us" that I killed. My bloodied hands, my guilty conscience and my regretful heart. What will happen to this place if I leave? Who will scavenge this?

I walk, toward a different direction from where I saw her. As I walk, a sudden strong force pulls my left leg as it prepares to leap frog over my right one. Because I have already shifted my weight with hopes that my left leg will catch me, I fall to the ground. My face meets the broken shards, as do my right arm and torso. As I use my hands to help me stand up, I see her face. I fell to her corpse. She is happy. I never saw this one before. A corpse of her, smiling? Yet I see the sadness in her eyes. She did enjoy living in this house, at the cost of something else. I took something from her, it made her sad. I stand to look around and find what that something is so I can at least bring her corpse at peace. As I stand and walk, I hear a clashing metal behind me. My heel feels it, something holds it in place. I'm cuffed. Cuffed to this broken burned down home. Tired. Exhausted. I sit down. It doesn't matter where I sit. I feel glass shards pricking my butt, but I couldn't care less anymore. I stare at her smiling face. That face will forever be engraved in my heart. The expression I longed to give her. I feel relief. At least at one point I succeeded. I'm not completely worthless after all. Or am I? She was happy with me, doesn't mean I did it for her. What matters most, however, is that she's there: skipping, enjoying the lush fields she's headed to. I look around. My leg muscles start to hurt, I want to stand. My right hand pushes the ground to support my whole body weight as I stand. I feel a hard object on my right butt-cheek. What? What's this? I reach in behind my pants, turns out there's a pocket. Without proper sight, I use my sense of touch to identify where the object is, then my fingers wiggle to roll the metallic object to my grasp. I wrap the object with my four fingers, due to my thumb being outside the pocket, and pulls out while being careful for it not to fall. I cross my arm from my behind to front. I look at my clenched fist and, slowly, my fingers let go, letting the metallic object roll to my palm. I stare at it. It's a key. Plain simple key. With a quick common sense I subconsciously look down towards my heel.

The winds are blowing. I stand in the middle of a rubble, broken glasses, broken pillars, burned wood, burned walls. Thrown down ceiling, a complete pulverization, full destruction, something one can walk amidst but can never live in. I see our corpses, lying like scattered masks of opera.

I grasp on the key as I look around. I bend over and pick up a broken mirror shard. I look at its sharp end.