They That Lived

It was as if the broken red walls and the wide gaping opening for a gate was inviting us, a portal to another world. The thatched roof of it long rotten from timely tropical rains. I could almost see the air swirling inside... the image of the cemetary created in wisps of transparent smoke. We walked quietly towards the portal, half anticipating disaster. As we come closer to the red stone gate, it seems as if we are pulled inside by sheer curiosity and the genuine stupidity of a moth flying rapidly towards a flickering flame. As I crossed the portal, the outer world seemed to fade away into soundless oblivion.

Inside this portal lies a monde etrangere, stranger than fiction, more vivid than reality. We were surrounded by graves of people who lived. We walked amongst black stones and white. Grey marble walls stretched to infinity, rose to nothingness. Poems created in loving, even grudging memories etched away in heaps of dust. The earth more liquid than water, the air more solid than stone. Everystep has the essence of a life beneath it. Life that was dried out of itself, life that gave birth to new life, life that has faded away from the earth's memory but for the grey stones that represents them.

Soon we grow dizzy. Thoughts of wraiths and spectres haunt our ignorant souls.
As we turned to go, our shoes suddenly felt heavy with dead weight. We reached the portal in great numbness and stillness, turned to look at the world of spirits dead for the very last time, as we stood there. We both thought up a spectre. He saw his lady in white and I saw an old hunched back man, both standing in the same place, triggering the same thought. None invoked any feeling of fear, because none threatened us with their presence, these spectres appeared just in thought, and disappeared as soon as we stepped into the portal.

We left.