Aftermath
MY FRIENDS ARE ALL LOST
Only the two children and the principal are left standing this day. He was bleeding profusely. All my friends are lost. I could not help but think all my friends were gone. Would they ever come back? Would I ever see James again?
All that was left to identify students were the items lying under bricks and mortar that could link a parent to a child—a silver necklace with only half a heart.
Some Pieces of a boy’s overalls, with a red string tied at the top. A toy soldier with only one arm. A handmade Handkerchief with smudged blood mingled with colorful threaded flowers—three cat eye marbles.
Her mother could not recognize her daughter’s face in a young girl’s hair without the red and white striped hair ribbons.
Those were the items coveted by all the other mothers and fathers who had lost their children yet could not identify them.
It was sickening that there was jealousy over the few found items. They would not be allowed the dignity to have a proper burial for their children. In fact, at one point in the mortuary, the story was told of two fathers fighting over the leg of one of the boys. All decency escaped that day.
AFTERMATH
A sea of patched-up overalls walking towards the town’s mortuary. Not men, just a walking silhouette of bloody dirty blue. No youthful sounds. A continual wailing was coming from the building. Men carried their wives out in a regular pattern. Like the procession a parade might take, you turn your head in sadness instead of watching not to miss it. When the madness settled down, the scene changed to complete solitude.
The town heard no youthful sounds on the streets or in yards in the following months. Mainly because the youth had been wiped bare from the city, and mothers of the living children felt so guilty their children had not perished, and they kept them quiet, so the families of the lost children would not hear and remember. One gigantic wound needed to heal. The scar left would forever be laid bare as a reminder of the day without smell. There should have been a smell. Why wasn’t there a smell?
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