Dying days

The building was empty and surrounded by security fencing, topped
with barbed wire. There was an eeriness, the life gone out. Autumn was coming, but it was still casually warm in the loneliness. The watching hills silent, expectant, alert to see what would happen next. Stillness
coiled. Cross Kopje, in the distance, a reminder of another kind of suffering, remote and stark against the rocky African sky. Sleeping during the day, my thoughts and a rifle my only companions and later, emerging in the late afternoon to grin and bear it. In the closing darkness through the empty streets, lamps flickered, faces hidden behind curtains of fear. I arrive as the Police Commander sucked on a cigarette, the room blue with smokey four letter words. Hanging in the air, a thought. A need to escape this ghastliness of being part of holding something together that could not be held, and unknown to us, ten months off a different world waiting.

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* Cross Kopje dominates the Mutare skyline.

© 2023 Copyright Rick Frame