Laments from the Road, Part 2 – Carrión de los Condes

The plains are silent as we cycle through them,
and it’s almost a desert:

the endless, barren fields – harvested or burnt out – are the same pale, yellowish-brown as the old, quiet stones of the occasional (old, quiet) village we cross;

the sun’s beating down on us as if it were August instead of October;

the lines and shapes of the land are blurred in the haze.

It could almost be a movie scene –

and suddenly, for a moment, the tractor that turned onto the road right in front of me, breaking the silence, turns into a – pale, yellowish-brown – death machine sent by some nameless, dystopian empire

and the wind that whistles in my ear becomes a sentient, malicious force sapping away my strength as I push against it.

I’m almost afraid, in this liminal place.

Yet, I am not.

Because I am the wind.
Because if the wings on my back were real (and not just true), they would span the entire horizon.

Because this soundless almost-desert, bereft of colours, is but a weak, real-life reflection

of my inner landscape of grief.

 

 

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