"ceremony"
The man opened his eyes to the sound of a single rifle shot.
0600.
The ceremonial call to defend the city.
He could almost smell the carbon on the gasp of winter streaming through the window.
The woman in the bed beside him reaches for him mechanically.
He eludes her.
He rises from the bed and moves over to the window.
"Where are you going?" she calls after him.
He stands at the narrow pane naked, looking out unto the ancient square.
It occurs to him to take a cigarette, but then he remembers that he doesn't smoke.
"You not answer me? You not soothe me. You make me on fire, but you not soothe," she mutters bitterly.
He closes his eyes and blows cold air back unto ether as if it were smoke.
"You should focus on the former," he says absently as he gets dressed.
Soon thereafter, he was standing in a throng at the city cemetery.
They had all gathered to commemorate the sacrifice of the young people of the city who had been killed during and since the 2014 invasion and occupation...
Not annexation.
And as seven sisters distributed candles unto those gathered so that they could lay them at the tombs of the countless fallen...
From just one city...
The man kept asking himself...
Again and again...
With shaking, empty hands extended before him...
"What have you done?"
"What have you lost?"
"What have you bled for?"
Orthodox priests preside over the lamentations with reverence...
Over the ceremony.
The military contingent is there too...
The circle of Colonels...
To honour the fallen.
And to secrete their hangovers into morning air.
Snow begins to fall, and for a fleeting spell it almost seems as if all of this is real...
Sincere...
And that the lessons have been learned...
And we now know that lives depend on the promises that we make...
Whether as lovers...
Or contested states...
Whether invaded...
Occupied...
Or emancipated...
And recognised for sovereignty.
An elder in tattered clothing and a moth-eaten woollen scarf approaches the man and asks him to sign a petition vowing eternal allegiance unto the city.
The man takes the pen but his hands are shaking so terribly for the cold and the absence of anything solvent between people that it falls away from him.
The elder went to gather the pen from the snow, but in the time it took him to overcome the aches of his bones and joints the other had already rippled off with the procession.
As the procession lurched along the snow swept winter streets, the man noticed an older woman shuffling off to the side.
She was laden by some terrible, mortal weight...
As three small boys chased after balloons in her wake...
Squealing in youthful delight.
At some point, one of the Colonels took the man by his arm and muttered, "It's inevitable, eh? When do you think they will come?"
The man sighed.
"Nothing is inevitable except that which we permit...
After Christmas, I think."
The Colonel regarded him with bitter alarm.
"Sorry, did I say something wrong?"
Silence.
The procession lurched on.
The church appears in the distance, and sun emerges on the eastern horizon.
The collective soon enters into the temple and all those young souls who were killed will be well and truly commemorated...
Celebrated...
Because people are so fucking sincere...
In their grief...
And their mourning...
It is not a show.
It is not a show.
Three politicians circle the pulpit with plastic sympathy adorning their faces distributing leaflets on which transcendent ideas for the bold way forward are beautifully hand written by third tier staffers.
The occasion is too heavy.
It is too much for the three children still chasing after balloons outside the windows of the church.
No child should ever have to bear such a burden.
The man settles into the fold, and the ceremony goes on...
And on.
At some point, when everyone has been standing for so long...
Observing the tenets of ritual...
Another elder takes the man by his arm and whispers...
"There was not so much collaboration here, you know? It's not as bad as people suppose. It wasn't. The Nazis were simply a means to an end... Better than Stalin. You know?"
The man said nothing, for a spell.
Until he did.
"Shit on every side."
The elder lowered his head.
"Exactly."
Three hours later, the ceremony ended.
The solemn flock dispersed...
They carried their stories and their distractions back unto their own lives...
Whilst simultaneously...
Eternally...
In some frozen, hollow fissure of existence...
Those young people who were killed over border disputes and distinctions decompose in their state-funded holes just a little bit more.
At least there is that...
There is...
That.
Hours later...
Perhaps 2200...
The man is standing at the window again...
Naked...
Wondering at the folly of it all...
The eternal compromise...
Ideal...
And imposed or chosen circles of hell...
On earth...
The woman strides into the room.
She is wearing only her black, see-through stockings.
Her skin is like milk in the darkness.
She brings tea, and sets a mug upon the sill before him.
"What are you thinking?" she asks him.
"I am thinking of an old woman I saw today. There was something about her...
There was something there."
The woman sets her mug of tea down next to his on the sill and tries to pull him down onto the bed.
She tastes of vanilla and myrrh.
He could easily lose himself there.
But something is off.
Something is different.
The world is shifting...
And the old gods and demons are freeing themselves once again.
The man rises and dresses hurriedly.
The woman is calling after him...
"You are worse than a devil...
You are worse!"
As he comes to the door and bursts into the street he calls back to her...
"Focus on that!"
He runs through the streets as if his life depends on it.
He does not know why.
He passes the youth of the city...
Gathered to celebrate and forget time and space...
To create human connections...
The fabric of everything that is and needs to exist for any of this to work.
But only if there is some fundament to the connection...
Or?
Is nothing solvent?
Is nothing relevant?
Did those kids die for nothing?
The man runs and runs.
He can smell the carbon of an expended round.
It stings the nostrils.
It damns the soul.
Finally, he comes unto the city square at which the old woman that he saw at the side of the procession earlier is standing by herself at the corner.
The man slows.
He greets her.
She does the same.
The winds have gathered.
It is so cold.
Emptiness is a lesion within the soul.
It is real.
The man wonders at the reason for her having moved alongside the procession when everything is superficial and self-serving...
There is no reverence, so what was she expecting to find there?
In his mind he sees and smells the ravages of conflict in life...
The world.
He processes it with every beat of his heart.
But that is not enough.
What about this woman?
What has this experience shown her?
She is holding a satchel, from which she procures three thin white books.
She proffers them with bright blue eyes peering at him across age...
Loss...
Despair.
"What are these?" He asks.
"These are the books I wrote for the memory of my beautiful son who was killed when they came in 2014...
These are my life."
In the stillness of a moment...
A time to reflect...
The man realises that he has neither lost, nor bled for anything more than himself in his bordered, selfish, and pallid existence.
Neither he nor the woman says anything...
She merely regards him...
Wondering whether he will take the chance to be more for himself...
And for this world...
As the ceremony...
Continues on.
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