Lighter blood

He noticed that the person who crossed his path almost daily on his morning walk didn’t return his smile. He looked nervous, and when their eyes met instead of a welcoming being, that he always was, he sensed a confused person out of his elements as if a new form was engulfing him. It must have baffled him in the beginning, very likely he resisted, and then realized it’s futile and so let it feed his soul. It must be painful to loose oneself like this. To immune one’s immediate surroundings to fate or to justify it in one’s own logic so as to survive the unfolding trauma. Everyday has to be accounted for, lived, and folded neatly to be abandoned in some dark recess. Next few days, he could see him mumbling to himself as he walked briskly in his own crumbling world. He didn’t see him anymore. He vanished as many were in increasing frequency. These were no longer being reported. People had started to accept it. He recalled when they show concern, they enquired about wellbeing, and in extreme rare case of disappearance they reported to the police –who made sincere effort to locate the person. The crows wrangle over persistent pigeons who were fed by elderly woman. She had fresh wounds on her hands that she covered with bright colored torn cloth. He stopped to enquire about the wound but she wouldn’t speak. He was seeing too many wounded people. They didn’t speak. The city was being slowly but steadily consumed by silence. People were learning to keep secrets, while some made stories to fill up the gap before succumbing to silence. Streets were being renamed for ease of classification. It took away all the familiarity that was associated with the place. They didn’t protest. Very soon they passed dead bodies. Instead of being shocked and gather around to seek justice and mourn the dead they mind their own business and purposefully walk to their destination. Sometimes when a mutilated body blocked their path they would stop and carefully drag the entrails to street corner holding the fabric so as to not spoil their hand. They were no longer troubled by these sights, and curiously didn’t show any sign of emotion even if that person was known to them or that they had seen him only a few hours back walking on the street or that he sat on the open window blankly staring at the passerby. Some buildings were blown open, held precariously by concrete metal scaffolding. On the first floor a half made cot dangled soaked in dry blood while a vase with yellow flowers kept immaculately arranged in the cupboard with framed photograph. A woman cleaned the floor avoiding the dangerously dangling part. She rub the mosaic vigorously and wipe the sweat off her forehead. A boy poked the smoking debris with a long stick. He stuck a metal, it made a clanging noise. He instinctively whistle a tune that echo across the street. The utensil seem full. He hooked it out. It open and spill milk on to the sidewalk and stream into the puddle of fresh blood. He saw the milk creaming into the blood. He could see the city washed in lighter color.

(...from the reading of "Captive Mind" by Czeslaw Milosz)