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After the planes had gone, and the supply trucks skidded north towards the city, we arrived and gathered what remained amongst the charcoal and ash, cradled them in our arms, and pushed them into a pile.
The sergeant swamped fixed mouths and bleached navels with gasoline, spat and flipped his lighter.
We shuffled back a little as eyeballs clicked and bones boomed. Otherwise, they kept quiet.
We were grateful for the pure heat of the desert afternoon. With some of the ash that remained the sergeant brewed coffee and we passed a cup around.
We licked our lips and looked at the horizon. There were piles like this one in the distance – bent spirals of smoke marking a border of a kind.
At visiting hour the kind trespassers bring bouquets of bones. White femurs poke from cellophane, lean against creamy costals and proud scapulars.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ says a woman, waking from a doze to reach for a daughter. She takes the bones, inhales their scent, calls them gorgeous.
She sits up in bed. The bones shift and nudge each other in a vase. The woman begins to talk about stitches and the place where it hurts.
“Robert Johnson was the most important blues musician who ever lived” — Eric Clapton
When the baby died, You couldn’t stand the silence, the sapping stillness. You were sulky, out of tune with yourself. The road and the music were overwhelming.
You stayed moving, breathed the dust of the Arkansas Delta. The guitar was handled in gloomy bars. You loaded the songs with shadows.
“I have a woman I’m lovin’, but boy she don’t mean a thing.”
The women were abundant or absent. You let the door creak behind you when the time seemed good. Stepped on another bus, and sloppy with regret, found another stage.
You flicked out the notes, threading a line through the chords of decades, sending yourself to a different world. Multiplying your presence through the strange tunnels of technology, your sharp high voice reaches me now, grasping for my attention.
“I went to the Crossroads, fell down on my knees.”
Myths grew like choruses. You knew the devil. Dead at 27. Another man’s woman. The use of poison. A cruel melody. The words shoot from the night, glistening with rumour. A familiar pain. Your voice is hidden in stasis, kept huge by time, innuendo and song. You are still singing —
“I’m standin’ at the crossroad, babe. I believe I’m sinkin’ down.”
After three months of nodding, I gave you a time and a fiction. When you quizzed me on your mother’s doorstep, laughter shook my ribs.
I mapped the route with happy candles, placed them down aisles, alongside pews. Lit them ’til the whole building was beaming. Music glittered from a hidden speaker.
You followed the lights, savoured the moment, came to the hidden chapel. In the far corner you found me, on one knee,
with a ring and a heart shouting with the weight of decision. Your face glittered. We kissed, and balanced a future on our lips.
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