Were I to write an historical novel, I would begin with the letters they wrote one another. Begin with their words of the daily, with a thread of love woven around them, then find the works of art that survived the bullets and the winds of time until today: here is a cross, there a mosque. I would look broader, and look wider, by reading academic works, listening for those that by some miracle of honesty escaped retouching by a political pen, escaped the fundamentalist desire that humanity be excluded fro the story.

I would look at old pictures for what they wore, and what they didn’t wear. I would fly their flags that had long gone to ground. I would think their thoughts for them. I would love their loves.

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It would all be imagined. None understand the blindness of their own time, and only grope toward the lack of sight in another’s. Were the long window of history standing open, the names recited and the events given dates, still the air that filtered through its curtain would be today’s air — this moment’s air. The air I breathe; the words I want to believe.

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So unwind the scarves and leathers: un-fly their flags. I will let go their hands, feel my fingers trace their palms to fingers to fingertips to nothing. I would know these thoughts are my thoughts, and the written histories simply the thoughts of others: the buried heart no longer beating, the bellows of the breath no longer swelling.

I would allow their art to be a fragment of pottery in the desert, whose original shape is only guessed. I would ignore the politicians who make invisible speeches. I would let those bodies’ forms rest where they were laid.

~

I end this flight by reading their letters, the word they used for hello, the word they used to say goodbye, how they reached for one another.

“Reaching” by Florian Schwalsberger @ DeviantArt.com

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