This wall is a great stairway, walls are things that shoot up, keep out, line the places where we mark the halls that carry our names. The busts of this one and that one, this history is in the hard labor of hearts, thrusts of piston and valve. I sit down at the first house, dizzy at the view over the wall, the tourist town below us, in buildings made old by the deliberate hand of business, not the rain, the sun, the untold billions of raindrops and tear drops of soldiers wishing for the lovers they left behind, untended crops, mothers weaving braids of grief in their hair. A little old woman bounces past me, leaping the brief weld of stone to stone, the stairs the legend and skeleton of the wall, where white cranes dance in pairs. Copyright © 2015 by Afaa M. Weaver. Used with permission of the author. |
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