The Survivors Speak (by Elizabeth Oakes) for those lost in the burning times Imagine trying to hide a flame burning in your hand, much less in your heart. We did that. Imagine covering up a conduit to the divine for so long that you forgot the way, for there were many of us that I think of as one. We did that. When the barbarians came, that was bad enough, but the churchmen were worse, their questions more double-edged than any sword, more blunt than any battle-axe. With their words they hacked and hacked. They did that. It became dangerous to look into a bowl of water, to stare at a candle flame, to speak syllables that the watchers couldnt understand. Our mothers must have warned us, “Dont listen to trees. Dont dig the roots or pick the leaves that heal. Live.” “Dont remember,” they said, before their flames were lit, their nooses tightened. “Forget.” Some things we forgot: how to unblear an eye, and that an eye should not be bleary, how to find a lost ring, and how to cure the ring of loss that binds us all. And so we forgot. And so we survived. We survived so well that we dont even know it.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 05:29:34 +0000
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