The Distant Dead

YESTERDAY

YESTERDAY

There was no moon, only stars. Below them lay the flat land. Lights shone there, too, in scattered handfuls: streetlamps and headlights and the small square windows of houses. High above them, in the hills that once rimmed the lake, a fire burned. It leaped and played among the acacias, golden, laced with orange, and black at its heart. It danced for a long time, this fire did, singing its fevered song to the night.

It takes longer than you might think, for a man to burn.