Just like then
But alone now
I was sitting on the hill, looking around the landscape
My body
Pocked with cratersdrained, belonging to nobody

Over on the horizon, where I,
So happy then,
Had watched the stars through the treetops with only a mysterious glare incandescent
In the wasteland

Thrusting through the surface of the earth
Like the stumps of your trees,
Breathingand yetnothing could be heard
But the strange dry rustle of sandgrains in the stillness of the air,
Pervaded by a cancerous smell

Time was long gone and the Soil was littered with memories of the beings who had yearned to know and crave everything

In my loneliness, only the silence encircling me in its unending harmony
just like back then

All I could feel was the growing cold interspersed with stinging blasts of smouldering heat

Still the landscape was unerringly phantomlike in the shimmering brilliance
timelessand mute

My senses were numb as I yielded
To the pain
Slowly

Suddenly the fog began to rise from the valley
blue and tender

She rested on my brow,
Brushing my temples with her gentle wings, caressing my eyelids
and sleep engulfs me after all those years

The voices have been singing in my head since then