The Leveler

Written in a moment of clarity about two years ago now. I'm still not entirely convinced there is a correct category for this.

The old woman next to me is crying. It is hushed and ragged but I can hear it above the sobbing of others. She is maybe thirty, but that is old.

There are many that pray. They are wailing to be saved like grotesque children and still others whose tears leak silently down their filthy cheeks in total silence.

I know what must happen: The lice filled straw welcomed me into a warm oblivion when I last slept. I have not been able to sleep calmly since my children were buried in a wide pit under a thousand strangers. Yet sleep came to me with deep soft wings in the middle of this crowded cell. That is how I know: Today I am going to die.

The young ones know it and the very old as well. They are singing poetry in their heads.

Not one of us will write down the lines and no one will hear them, in fact the thought of dead men’s poetry will cross the mind of very few indeed.  I think perhaps that Truth has been found and touched by many people all waiting to die.  Even if we lived (and we will not) we would not write down those lines. Prose written about death is profound only if it is written by a victim, and then only if the poet is talented.   For one of our kind, who but a decade ago were normal men and women, to write anything would be a scandal and furthermore offensive.

No- It is better that we remain profound in our silence. 

The last words of the greatest poets who die alone are transcribed into some far removed library in the back of dreams.  But no one here will know even of our lives. Our deaths are a concept now, and not a personal account.

 

 There is no one left alive that remembers us and I know we ourselves will die. For some this thought strikes at their vanity and they weep. I cannot blame anyone.

I can see the same dimming light in another man’s eyes. He knows as well.

The sleep told him the same as me.  I know that because I could sleep there is nothing left to keep me here.  I am not giving up; there is nothing to give up. I am not struggling with defeat or loss for there is no fight. I do not hate the men who kill me and I do not pity those surrounding me in the filth.  I no longer fear death in the slightest, not because I am very old or too tired of living. Not because my faith is strong, or because I believe there is something after this life; I do not want to see this world again nor any other.

As of now everything in the universe has the exact same importance.

I think now that it was a mistake to exist at all… to live was a brief excursion from reality.

If there is pain there is pain. I have not lost, this is merely happening. I am leaving here forever and I am not sorry.  I do not expect to see another side or meet any old acquaintances.  I do not care. I will die and it will be a welcomed thing.

 

I can hear screaming as they line us up. I do not feel the need to be profound or to remember anything special about what was my life. I do not need to see their faces or their guns.  I do not need to see my end or be remembered. The screaming and the stench grow distant and I am not afraid.  

 “How wonderful to see you again.” Death is both personal and empty. 

There is no sound and I am not the only one smiling.