March 2007, Content

The night sky, sterile and luminous, forgets us as we run through the deep snow towards an island of light.

Machine guns fire. Tracers arc through the sky like falling stars.

“Where are they? Where are they?” we scream, ripping through the door.

A man stands on the dirt floor, barefoot and bewildered. His wife is down with fever, his son drowned in the river a week ago. The house is septic.

We are furious.

“Tear down these walls. I know they’re here,” the commander shouts.

The country is teeming with them.

With fluid movements
drawers emptied,
beds flipped,
closets ransacked.

Nothing.

0001 hrs. 01 Jan 00.

“It’s the party of the fucking century,” he sneers and we run to the next house, the sound of a man crying follows through the thin air.

We are a healing tumor.