No Return To Innocence
So after getting some tough juice from gorgeous @Soulheart I've decided to share my piece with you. I hope it will give you something.
Kind Regards
Montezino
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B17DqYbs_GamVTdOaUltSFVaQzQ
No Return To Innocence
You tore me up bit by bit,
had a taste of me,
just enough
not to seem too greedy
You licked my face, and removed layers of tiny clothes,
caressing my cheeks with trembling hands
While I...
I hid in the corner and slept away long days,
But you needed my flesh.
So you pushed me out in the cold
so that my bare wounds would burn with guilt and shame
before you with too warm fingers
ripped off frozen pieces of my skin
All while...
You laughed at my infirmities.
You smiled while you shredded my tear ducts to fragments of dust,
sowing together bleeding wounds with empty words,
so that I would not rot.
Frostbitten...
Nearly picked to death,
Did I hold tiny hands over my gender
whispering;
- Not my innocence, do not eat me there.
But people blinded by magnificence will always want more,
so you greedily stuck your quivering fingers towards the forbidden
and filled my mouth with your manhood
so that I would not speak
not ever
again
That's when you stole the light
from my eyes
and replaced them
with reflection
of emptiness.
The boy that escaped
Disclaimer: The following story is based on a true event after a boy had escaped from a concentration camp, however not many details are known about it, very specific details in the text may not be factual.
Guards, barbed wire, electrical fences and an open camp with no hidden secrets- against all odds the little boy escaped. After running with his bare feet through the cold mud, hidden within the gloom of night and ushered by the white moonlight, next to a big brick house, he encounters an old wooden shed with no windows and a door of decaying wood and rusty metal. The boy inspects the door and finds a lock hanging from it- they forgot to lock it- he assumes. Old, abandoned objects are the hosts of the small room: broken clocks, dusty books, and a clean Nazi flag, its prominent bright red colour is still easily spotted through the darkness of the room. Even with the closed door, the boy can still find his way around the room with the guidance of the frail gleams of the moonlight entering through the wooden gaps. Passing clouds at times faded the light completely, leaving the room under a blanket of darknesses, but the boy keeps on blindly exploring the room- looking for a resting place. Eventually, he settled for a spot on the floor full of dirt under the corner table, where he could hide behind the flag if anyone were to come in.
The quietness of the room vanishes with the frequent clamorous growls of the boy's stomach, but even with the absence of silence, the boy finds peace in his mind to quickly fall into a deep rest.
*
The boy slowly starts to wake up from his long rest and softly pulls his hand from under the blanket covering him to rub his eyes. He then looks at what was over him and sees his body completely buried under the red, white and black of the flag which he pulled from the pole during the cold night. Suddenly, the boy's face goes as pale as the outside snow and his body becomes completely paralysed in fear as he sees the open door and from it a strong, tall Man comes in with an axe on his hands. The Man approaches the boy with slow sharp steps with his heavy boots- the boy holds his breath- the Man stops half way and puts his axe on a table before leaving without ever looking at the boy. The boy sees the open door but instead of taking a risk, he covers his head with the blanket- and waits.
The heavy sound of the Man's boots pounding on the hard floor comes back into the room, a strong sound echoed by the sound of the shivering boy’s own heartbeat. Silence. For the first time the boy hears the Man's deep voice, "Here you go, boy!" said the Man with an odd playful tone, followed by the sound of the door being locked. When uncovering his head, he's smacked with a dry smell that makes his stomach growl like a dog. He explores the room and finds a metal bowl in the middle of the tiny room, which seemed to contain the source of the smell familiar to the scent of spices, but his attention turns to the open cans of pesticide, which he fails to recall if they were there last night. His eyes stare at the suspicious bowl and his stomach growls with despair, he bites his lip and eventually, he makes his decision and takes his first step towards the bowl.
Before he's able to move any closer, the boy hears small steps being taken from under a table where the Man left the axe and the poison cans. A furry head comes out of the dark and starts feeding on the bowl. The boy crouches as he watches the dog devour his meal, pieces of its food jump out of the bowl like stones spit from a volcano. The boy grabs his loud belly in an attempt to censor it, but the ever increasing growls grab the attention of the dog, showing little interest in the starving little boy. With a torturous, craving need to satisfy his hunger, the boy's hand fetches a tiny piece of food that fell on the floor. With his weak breath he blows on to it and rubs it with his fingers, trying to expel the dirt from it, but his coal black, dirty hands fail him on this task. The more his fingers rub, the more wet and sticky they become from the moisture left from the dog's mouth.
His hand slowly carries the little wet piece covered in dirt into his open mouth when he notices the dog attentively staring at the boy. Their eyes stay fixed on each other until the dog comes further out from the shadows and taps the bowl with his snout. Neither one moved for a long minute. The dog, again, pushed the bowl even further and the boy slowly comes closer to the dog and reaches for the bowl, leaving the tiny piece behind. It is still half full. The meal tastes better than anything ever served to him in the Camp. When the bowl is empty, the boy falls asleep while petting his friend, and during the night- he's warmed by its fur.
*
With the passing of days, the young boy and the old dog split every meal, no matter how small the amount- the dog ate half and left half. But eventually, the share of food comes to an end...
The peaceful music of laughter and giggles from the little boy is played in the little shed as he and his friend happily play together. But suddenly, the dog stops and stays completely still. The boy follows the dog's sight and turns around, he's face grows red, he sees the black figure of the Man blocking strong sunlight barging in through the open door. The Man immediately closes the door with all his strength as the boy runs to it. The boy uses all of his strength: pushing and pulling the door, kicking and punching- but even with his strength the door won't move. The boy falls onto the floor with his back to the door and tears in his eyes, he screams and hugs his legs for comfort. His friend comes closer, licks his tears and rests his head on the boy's legs. And they wait, together...
The boy wakes up with the sound of the lock being open and instinctively looks at the axe, but does not reach for it; waiting to see one of the Camp's Guards, he instead sees the man- holding a bowl in each hand.
Safety Nets
Rumor beats paper and says she jumped
off the water tower, hit the soil
so hard that the earth buckled
beneath her and collapsed like the muscles
of her mother when the police called
her at 4pm. First responders teed off
later that afternoon and wedged
their way to the hazard. Her corpse ruined
their chances of a bogey, but the mayor
announces her death as a victory:
at least she didn’t hemorrhage
in the tank. At least we’ll have drained
the city of her memory by Monday.
Caution stays for the next seven days.
Sheriffs guard the dome with Chevrolets,
then replace their eyes with cameras
for higher definition. Bullying, the mother
shrieks to the reporter, but no one listens.
The principal hides his face. Utilities
reinforce the fence with concrete
and install searchlights at its base. I wonder
which our town thinks we’re protecting,
the water supply or the youth
who may choose to die by hurling
their bodies from thirteen stories
above the ground. How will they shield
them from the truth? She killed herself
with a noose around her neck,
yet they prefer to blame heights
instead of tongues because they can’t
stitch nets onto the roofs of our mouths.
Snow
Snow is beautiful.
I've never really appreciated that sentiment, until now. For all of my life I hated snow. It's cold and wet. It freezes all it touches and, if ever given the chance, it kills. It destroys the lives of plants and animals alike. It freezes soil, water and swallows the Earth itself. The cold has always been synonymous with death to me, and snow has always brought the cold. That is why I have always hated snow.
But snow is beautiful.
I see that now. You only truly appreciate all life has to offer when you have no life left to give. When lying upon the ground, moments from death, ones mind is almost always swimming in regret. Thoughts of the past; all the things you could have done better, all the words you should have never said and all the words you should have. Regret envelops us and darkens our mind. Regret ruins our last moments and makes us wish for nothing more than a second chance. It makes us run from the pearly gates of heaven, it chases us away from the reaper's door and it creates a fear of that welcoming light we once wished to see. Yet, as I lay here dying, my mind is filled with only one thought.
Snow is beautiful.
Flakes of purest white glide down from the heavens, burying me as I slip away. They fall so slowly and with such calming grace that I cannot help but stare. How can something so cold at the touch appear so warm and inviting?
My sight drifts from the sky and instead to the meadow all around me. Once lush with green, it is now a blanket of white. It mixes with the red that I am leaving behind, creating a gorgeous contrast. Colours grow brighter even as my sight dims. The pain I felt no longer exists. All that does is the white mixing with the red. Flakes fall upon my tranquil grave, bringing me peace. No regrets dampen my thoughts and no fear burdens my soul. I drift, but my eyes never look away. I die, but my eyes never close. I stare as the flakes fall upon me and I stare when only one thought remains, until it at last disappears.
Snow is beautiful.
Take It
Take the walls I painted
The ones I've spent countless times
Scrubbing crayon marks off of
The ones I've rearranged
More times than I can count
-New pictures of a family lost
-Dusty drawings from the kids
The kids I raised inside these walls
Take the rocking chair
The one I used to breastfeed
Our son
The one him and I
Would play peek-a-boo behind
Take the gardens
Where I placed gramma's
Most loved ceramics
Take that horse
- (Donkey)
I use to sit on when I was little
The one I've smiled at
Every time I'd catch one of our kids on
Take the kitchen table
Soaked in tears and frustration
Induced by 4th grade math
And my lack of math skills
Take my home
Take my dogs
Take that cat that's cuddled me
More times than your arms ever have
Take the bed
The place where sweet nothings
Live, breed, and fester
Where two pillows lie
-One drenched in tears
-The other rests your head
Take my hopes
Take my dreams
Take it all
But in the meantime-
I'll be the one
Who's keeping me
The Boy And The Flood
The boy awoke to the sound of rain as it pelted the roof of the workshop. There was a howling in the air as winds battered the walls. The door to the building rattled back and forth on its weathered hinges and the boy prayed that it would hold for the night. He shivered and squirmed deeper into his nest of blankets and rags, scrounging for the remnants of warmth within them. He opened his eyes, though it served little purpose. It was still nighttime and the night was always darker than any shadows or voids he could possibly dream of. Opened or closed, he was blind to the world.
During the day, he had found dried, crusted cloths stained black with oil hidden inside one of the large metal cabinets. He used the cloths and twigs he had gathered from outside and built a tiny fire using one of his matches. He had watched the thin wisps of smoke rise and seep through the vents mounted high on the walls and eventually fell asleep to the sound of the crackling flames.
The fire had died some hours ago and now he sat in the cold and the quiet. It was so dark that he could barely see his hand when held inches from his face. The outlines of cabinets, shelves, tools and the shell of an old car could barely be seen, fuzzy and not quite there as if some glaucoma had dimmed what little of the world remained.
With the fire gone, the cold clawed at his skin. The boy curled into a ball and pulled the rags tightly over him. His cheeks and hands were raw and the back of his throat froze with every breath. With no fire, he feared he might die.
The sound of the rain and wind outside had grown violent with the booms of thunder claps as if God himself had come to rage upon the ashes and wash them all away.
He began to hum a tune to himself, although where he had heard it and what the lyrics were, he did not know. It always calmed him. It was the only song he knew and it reminded him of different days – better days. Ones he wished he could grab the memory of and relive.
An hour passed and still the boy lay wide awake, shivering in the cold. He could feel hunger rising within, biting him with the teeth of a starved beast. He had bottled water and cans of old soda, but no food left. He could go many hours without food these days, but it had now been a full day since he last ate. The taste of the canned broth still rested on his tongue and his stomach groaned in remembrance of it. The pain of hunger was something he had grown accustomed to, but it was often still enough to keep him awake at night and even when he slept through it the hunger visited him in dreams.
The rain continued to fall. Sometimes the sound of it would lull him to sleep, but on nights where the storms were especially bad, on nights like this, he’d lie huddled in a corner, frightened that it would slip under the door and drown him and everything else in the room. It could rain for days. The world would flood and overnight it would transform itself into an impassable bog of sludge and black ice. The boy couldn’t even drink from the puddles because it would burn his gums whenever he tried, as if the sky had cried acid.
When it last rained, the boy had been trapped inside an abandoned block of flats. The rain had fallen for only three days, but he remained stranded for an entire week as the water gradually dissipated enough for him to move on. He had survived on what little food and drink he had left, and on the rats that scurried up and down the halls.
The boy hoped the rain would stop soon. There weren't any rats here. Only strange tools and metal cabinets.
Again, he hummed the tune he didn’t know. The nameless song that so often replaced the grey of the world with colour. He hummed it to himself and to the dark of the night and hoped that one day it would hum back.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of the better days. He sang the tune in his head and tried to remember the words. He tried to ignore his hunger; he tried to ignore that he was cold and alone in a world of no one and he tried his best not to cry.
The earth shook with thunder once again and he felt an icy wetness seep into his blankets as the room began to flood.
Left or Right
Disclaimer: The following text is a description of an elderly Jewish couple on the train towards the Auschwitz camp. Characters in it are completely fictional, but all of their experiences are based on factual events, which means something similar to this would have happened to them.
I've been trying to keep count of the passing days while feeling the warmth of day and the cold whispers of the night's wind sliding through the wooden gaps of this walking prison. My children, and their children, they all got on the train before me, for that reason they were put in a different cell. We’re traveling together, though I am not with them. But I'm not lonely; beside me is my true company, my wife Vida, a true baleboste (master of the house). We both share the food we've brought to the train- in secret. A few others have also brought food, but some of them were not wise enough to keep it a secret, they've let other travelers see the food. Now, they carry no food and their bodies are soulless, while the thieves of this train feed on the bloody bread.
What's happening? I can hear the screams of rusty metal being dragged across rotting wood. The same sound of when the doors were closed. Suddenly, with the sound of an opening door, a mountain of light collapses into our cell with only one shadow being cast by a man that starts helping everyone out. The oldest ones cannot compete with the force of the young ones that fight to freedom and push us to the back. We were the last two to leave, leaving behind a cell furnished with corpses of the unfortunate ones.
After we leave the train they begin to take away from us what they believed we shouldn't have. My eyeglasses are taken from my face without a request and thrown into a hill of confiscated objects, in it, though it was hard to see, I recognised a unique familiar bag which belongs to a friend, and I now wonder: if it is a comfort or a burning sadness that he too is here with me in this place.
For now, I do not know what awaits me, but I do know I’ll find it impossible to sleep by the end of the day. I see the pain of the young ones that walk with naked feet on the hard gravel; they walk in front of me in a straight line not allowing me to see their faces of misery, but I can hear the torment in their gasps and involuntary shakes with every step they give. For an odd reason, Vida and I were allowed to keep our shoes.
The line is too long. We're the last two in a long, long, long line of people. In fact, people from the front are just dots. At least they appear to be so. Some moving left while others moving right. We wait and wait, as time is the only thing we have with us. My wife grips my hand with such strength that it makes me wince and awakes me from my thoughts. I look up to see what caused her a disturbance and see my family: my children in the company of their own children.
I might not see as well as I once did, but I can see a mile away when my little girl, Kiva, is upset. My children go right and their children go... left. They're not allowing this to happen, they will not be separated! They scream and demand to go with their children, they're threatened with guns aiming at their heads, but they're too brave.
I yell as loud as I can to go with their children.
The "doctor", which decides who goes left or right, fixes his eyes on me, his eyes move up and down- judging my appearance- his focus shifts to my walking stick, he remains unimpressed. In a rough accent, he asks me "Is this your wife?" I say "She is my wife, yes..." His face turns away and he whispers to the man on his right, he then proceeded with his work of pointing left and right. The man he whispered too approaches me with a warm smile and says "Come, you and your wife can accompany your grandchildren." and so we go towards the left side.
There's a repulsing smell of sweat and unwashed people, familiar to the one in the train, as we go into a room that was built underground, it has no windows and not much light survives in the sea of darkness that covers hundreds of people in the room. They're taking their belts off along with their shoes and jackets. I proceed to do the same. A man next to us has the same bag as mine. One of the soldiers approaches me and gives me a piece of chalk "For you to write your name on it." he said, "You should also tie the shoe laces together, we don't want you to lose anything when you come back."
We take our time and again, we are the last ones to leave.
The next room is... the next room is crowded, even more than the train, I thought such thing wasn't possible, but it is. My dear wife grabs my hand not to lose me. The children grab our legs. The man that advised me about the shoes approaches me on the edge of the entrance and pushes us to the crowd while another man closes the door. The arms and legs of those in the room move around like fishes out of water, all trying to fight for space to breathe; my chest is squished against the wall allowing no air into my lungs. In this room of movement, Vida can't stay still and she's swallowed by the crowd. I scream her name, hold her hand with a strong grip not to lose her, as the sea of people tries to take her away from me. Suddenly, I hear the voices of the little children- they're not with me! I travel towards them but the waves of movement are too strong- the bodies around me trap me as I hear the children scream for my name. A desperate man grabs my shoulders and pulls me down onto the floor so that he could put his head over the crowd and breathe. I try to knock him down, but I fail and fall on my knees… What smell is that? A repulsing smell. I open my mouth trying to breathe but I cough and cough, the harder I try to breathe the harder I cough. Everyone around me is in the same struggle- painful coughs, violent gasps and slow deaths. I still feel the hand of my darling- she no longer struggles, and neither do I.