The Followers

by Cheryl Anne Gardner

Heard the bells in the distance as rain fell hard on the clothesline, revealing strange cast off patterns in the tatty fabric you’d left to whip in the wind. Withered bone to dark skies held, an afternoon wilted upon your skin. 

You’d won the raffle. 

Touched the hollow. 

The fear lasting, and ugly, a veil of drizzle clouding your eyes, and your breath -- swollen -- fleeing -- I suspect -- the lies you’d told, the lies I’d assumed were true. No one spoke of it after that day. 

A misfortune, they’d said. 

Whispered never to your face. 

Eyes wander the streets, away from yours now. Your lot, they’d said as your name was pulled from that rusted iron box. You’ll dig the holes tomorrow even though you won’t have the strength to finish it. I’ll dig again the next day until you do. We’ll dig in the darkness and no one will help because it’s your lot. To dig them under. We’ll do this until he comes, netted in shadow, to take them all away to soil sown unseen. You’ll get to keep what remains, scorched into dry earth, and I’ll tend to that earth alone, weary and blistered from the rot and the heat, because that’s my lot. . . 

Until the bells toll again, 

Until the rain comes,

Until flowers grow frail in the empty spaces.