Just like then
but alone now
I was sitting on the hill, looking around the landscape
my body
pocked with craters....drained, belonging to nobody.

Over on the horizon, where I,
so happy then,
had watched the stars through the treetops with only a mysterious glare incandescent
in the wasteland.

Thrusting through the surface of the earth
like the stumps of your trees,
breathing.....and yet.....nothing could be heard
but the strange dry rustle of sandgrains in the stillness of the air,
pervaded by a cancerous smell.

Time was long gone and the Soil was littered with memories of the beings who had yearned to know and crave everything.

In my loneliness, only the silence encircling me in its unending harmony
...just like back then...

All I could feel was the growing cold interspersed with stinging blasts of smouldering heat.

Still the landscape was unerringly phantomlike in the shimmering brilliance
...timeless...and mute.

My senses were numb as I yielded
to the pain
slowly.

Suddenly the fog began to rise from the valley
...blue and tender.

She rested on my brow,
brushing my temples with her gentle wings, caressing my eyelids
...and sleep engulfs me after all those years.

The voices have been singing in my head since then...