The Hollows

 Walk Long...for you, by me.

Once, there was a time when innocence reigned like droplets of water falling from the skies, washing away the mire from our eyes. On parallel streets, walking parallel directions, two children played with hope in their hearts, waiting for love to take its place. While walking along in these parallel lives, a rock thrown, a knee scraped, and a cry of loneliness seemingly go unheard.

The children grew, mostly under the stars, ashamed of public view. Inside their chest a rot had formed from negligence and misuse. They hadn’t known that without love, they too could turn so cruel. The sun began to provide them pain, the streets ran empty when their feet were mobile, and alone they sought respite in the shadows of themselves.

Cold, it didn’t nip at them; heat, it didn’t sway their movement seeking shade. Wind only evened their eyesight with others as dust and dirt erupted into the sight of strangers. Storms drowned the peace around them to make them feel at home. Thunder claps collided with the shattering of a new piece inside their soul. The elements weren’t against them; their paths were their own.

Walking for ages, ankles grow weak. Shoes fall to wreckage and blisters harden their feet. The gravel no longer slowed them, as they felt only movement and need. Walk long, it echoed, somewhere deep inside the hollow. Walk long, it repeated, or was it just an echo. Walk long, the children heard inside, over the pounding of blood pumped. Walk long, it said as children became woman and man walking strong.

Generations died inside their minds as they walked their path unknown. Nothing conscious moved them forward, in time, they appeared to belong to the forests. But when the trees end their lives, slivers of light pass them by. But even as trees fall to the earth, their feet walk parallel lines.

Around the earth four times they moved, and nothing looked the same. Four times around this place they stomped and nothing had been changed. Walk long, one heard, yet this time loudly, somewhere else, not embedded. Walk long, the woman looked for her echo, and ahead saw one man drowning. It’s the desert, she thought, what words are choking him too? If she saved him now she’d likely die, simply for loss of her shoes.

But left she turned as she heard the words, walk here, inside, anew. The night drew curtains across the sun so each knew what to do. Walk here, it screamed, in the chest of both their hollows. Walk here, it sang, as they met the gaze of the one that no one followed. She lengthened her arm for him to hold and strength grew twentyfold. Push here, it said to each of them, one voice alone it read. Go there, was next, on the lips of the hollow, sounding muffled and far away. Goodbye it whispered as parallel lives became two steps the same. Vibrating inside, the hollow they felt, as it melded their space into one directive, “stay.”