Commemoration

I’ll stay inside today. I’ll turn off the lights and huddle inside my room, waiting for my
parents to come back home from work. Hopefully, nobody will come to this house asking for
candy. And when I hear the sharp sound of knuckles against the wooden door, or the ringing of
the doorbell, I’ll be quiet. Pretend no one is home. That’s what I’ll do. They’ll give up
eventually, and they’ll leave. That’s what I’ll do.
I’m almost home now, I can see the drying grass of the garden and the two large trees
that were standing right in front of it. But in front of the house, on the street right in front of it, an
entire procession of people were marching along the road, chanting, singing, and dancing. They
had, donned on their faces, vibrant and colorful masks along with brilliant robes draped over
their frail bodies that were glinting and glimmering in the golden light of the setting sun.
Contrast to the bizarre garments in which they wore, the sides of their faces, their slim necks,
their fleshless limbs, all of them were sickly and pallid. Yet despite their gaunt frame, they
danced vivaciously and passionately, slamming their feet against the coarse pavement with the
swiftness and gracefulness of a gazelle. They were entrancing. They were alluring. Their
seemingly endless march, tugging at my legs, beckoning me to follow. So I joined them in their
march.
As I pursue their mystifying parade, the world spins around me as I observe the empty
and abandoned houses flying by. I feel the sharp sting of the bitter wind brushing gently against
my skin, I feel the warm touch of the setting sun slowly leave me as it dips below the horizon,
and I feel the lingering mist in the dry air as the bittersweet smell of rain permeate throughout the
streets, intoxicating me, numbing me, exposing me. I dance. We dance. We dance through the
streets. We dance up the barren and cracked dirt path. The living and the dead. The boys and the girls. The men and the women. The wealthy and the poor. And everything that exists in between. The half-lit moon smiled ever so elegantly as we danced to the cemetery. To the graves. To the exit. And finally, to the entrance. During the finale, I stand in the middle of the cemetery. The masks are off. The clothes are stripped. Left only to their nakedness, they danced to their unification, to their end. And when the procession was over, when the party was over, there I stood, alone in the cemetery.