I Become the Sand

Put one foot in front of the other and drive your body forward. Every part is connected you see. Do you remember the rhyme or was it a song? 'The knee bone's connected to the (beat) thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the (beat) hip bone, etc, etc. Dem Bones I think it was called.' When I was a child and we were in the city during the week, there was no time for music. My parents were both doctors and always, always busy. My sister and I were taught to cook by Grammy. We both loved cooking. I was kind of savoury, my sister much sweeter. In every way. At weekends, if Mum and Dad could get time off, we went to the countryside where we had a shack. It makes me laugh to think we called it a shack when in reality it was a four bedroomed house. My favourite thing in the shack was a record player and my sister and I adored rummaging through the stack of random vinyl and selecting a play list to dance or sing along to. Maybe that's where Dem Bones came from?

Some weekends we just went to the country with Grammy in her battered old Subaru. She drove fast for an old person. Gramps was long gone, when I was just a baby, in another war on a faraway continent. We never, ever thought war would find us in our corner of the earth, but four years earlier the Gods of War sent a barrage of violence in our direction. We weren't ready for it of course. Our defences were weak, and they picked us up like helpless kittens, shaking us by the necks until our lives ebbed away. All those years we had watched in horror as atrocities were committed in other parts of the world. All those years when we did nothing but shed a tear and turn away. Now it was our turn. Our allies had melted away one by one as democracy gave way to dictatorship. 

They are all gone now. Mum, Dad, Grammy, my little sister. I am alone. I am on an enforced march across the barren outback. We do not know our destination, but I suspect it will not be welcoming or stocked with a selection of food to rival Coles or Woolies. I doubt there will be comfortable beds, clean clothes, or a plentiful supply of water. We are marching to our deaths. We are dispensable, disposable. Our conquerors didn't need us, just our land, land that unbeknown to us they had coveted for oh so long. Just in front of me an older man stumbles to his knees. His wife tries to get him up, but he shakes his head. His breath is rasping, and his skin is burnt raw. She drizzles precious drops of water into his mouth. He coughs. I cannot look any longer, so I walk on by. Put one foot in front of the other and drive your body forward. It has become a mantra. It is keeping me alive but for what? I do not hear the drones above; my ears are clogged with sand. I do not see the missiles dropping. I feel nothing. I become the sand.