A walk at the side of the ditch
(2017)
Random impulses from some piles of garbage one might find all the time in the woods near cities.
A walk at the side of the ditch
Deep in the woods at the edge of the town there is a ditch. A small groove,
nothing spectacular, following the winding path leading uphill.
You rarely see it. It is overgrown by thick undergrowth, repelling thorny
bushes to deter the occasional hiker. However, if you got across, you could
find all sorts of things there.
Things like an old couch with torn up covers, lumps of its spongy fillings
slowly spreading away towards a pile of broken tiles, the frame of a
television, a little deeper you might even find what was within that frame,
maybe even its remote.
Only the birds croak, only an occasional car on a nearby road, otherwise it is
all silent. A tiny spot of oblivion, where even time stopped to slowly melt
and rot away.
Then there are the eyes. A mangled, broken teddy bear looking up on you, an
arm missing, with those cute black pearls of eyes, the kind of memory you had
never seen since you were young, possibly decades ago.
Where did it came from?
Why it was there, here where sludgy water pours down in the rain, in this
forgotten ditch? Who had it long long ago?
A child, a cradle, the eyes, those eyes of the teddy bear, placed beside her
to calm her, a peaceful little boat sailing down the river of time, growing up
all in a swirl, out in the garden on a swing, cuddling her old teddy bear...
When these memories are to be gone?
When one gets too old, when it happens, when someone takes it, and hurls it
mercilessly away? Whose memory was it?
Pictures fading away. You walk and keep walking there, tackling the obstacles,
fallen branches and entire trees, and it all keeps coming. A ceramic vase
decorated with flowers, a small steel pot rusting away, a figure of a child
kicking a football still visible on it, a baby doll sleeping, that kind which
would close its eyes when laid on her bed. Now covered in dirt and ragged
clothes she sleeps in her garden of weeds, slowly becoming one with nature,
long forgotten memories crumbling apart...
And you?
Everyone?
What is to be, where will we end up, on the side of a ditch when everyone
dies?