SKELETONS

The whiteness of their bones was gazing at me from the depth of a small grave I had dug. Their bones, bleached like pearls or Nature's noblest glass: an ivory tower ready to collapse when the flesh is no more with the soul.

Two skeletons in the grave, their souls had escaped some years ago. Their remains--before I had collected them--were six feet under, located on two opposite continents.

The bones are of a man and woman. Adam and Eve of their primordial, singular son. Towards the end of their lives, she had her hair silvered by age. His hair, on the other hand, remained dark as they have been throughout his earthly career. By now, their skulls were devoid of any growing thing, but what I observed were piles of oddly shaped turds swirrling around their skulls that I wished had turned into gold before their mortal departures.

Their boney arms were crossed, touching one another. Each skull facing the other. Close. Ready for the kiss of death. Longing for the kiss of unhate and forgiveness. Dreaming of silence and peace, which where unpresent even in the intervals of the quick-born tornados of their close proximities.

Now, they were made ready for the kiss of birth. And the Navigator of their further journey was I, the product of their follies: the restless wounds and mournful blades.

It took me several years to bother to look for them. And a couple more to find and collect them.

It made me pay visits to two different continents. Opposite only illusionally. Eternally, bound together in the distant future of the vastly forgotten past. Finally, eventually, entangled by their first born son. Myself.

The shovel in my hands was strikingly restless. Small mounds of dark soil began to rapidly cover my inverted guardians like pieces of a puzzle created with the hand of an expressive painter: splattered all over the whiteness of their bones.

"You will learn how to love now," I whispered toward the remains of their shells. And the autumn wind played its song. And a bird sent down a rusty leaf.

The clouds were hazy, full of predictable mysteries of many shades of gray.

I gazed down at the disappearing shapes of their remains once again, and through clenched teeth and newborn tears, I cried out against them:

"You will learn how to love!"

And I awaited an answer, farewelled by a lenghty soliloquy of silence instead.