After The War

There is always this still silence after a fight, tensions stirred in the air become like dust. I still remember in details, the last attack. The one that showed us who our neighbors were. Nobody has forgotten that fight since most of the youths then were employed as soldiers. Everyone was affected by the war.

I lay in my room thinking of what I was going to eat, then I heard Uncle John in his usual murmur from the next room: ‘I am sure he’s not scared of the forthcoming elections even if it results to war. It is Uncle John, he can survive it, but then again, he is now blind.’ I got up and came down from my bed, went out of my room into Uncle John’s who was now seated in his usual hand-woven chair.

‘Uncle, tell me again, what happens after a war is over? How does it feel?’ Uncle John smiled and said, ‘a soldier once returned home after a war, he was out of his village for 15 days. Once he returned home, he never spoke to anyone about what happened. He would wake up everyday and go to the mango tree outside, and he will murmur to the tree. One day, the village woke up to meet his dead body hanging by a rope from the tree. Do you know what the villagers did’? ‘They burnt his body and cut down the tree. A few days later, he was forgotten.’

‘So you see my son, after the war the waterfall will become a stream, a river, a lake or even rain. Life will continue my son. Life must continue.’ I walked out of that room still thinking about what to eat that morning. One thing I knew though was I couldn’t stop the impending war that comes with the election.

Ruddapoet [TRCP]