Simple 3

You reach out to touch it, and as you do, you forget what it is you seek and notice your hand. Cracked, worn.

You return to where you hope the memories are still warm, solid. You think you can take them, hold them and shape them: change the past. You do not know that all you see is inside, not real, a lie to distract you from your fellow locusts who eat; to die.

You do not see all the backs turned to you; the stony ridges of their spines hard to your entreaty: 'Just a little. Please. Just such a small, tiny, insignificant...little'.

They pass you by in gleaming carapaces of engineered perfection wrought of blood and ill-considered promises.

Which is not to say the well-meaning have done no good; they have done much no good.

And now they forsake you by forgetting; forgetting you were one of them. But those are those who would cut off their nose (s) if fashion demanded it of them. Though if they did not consume, they would each other; it is to be hoped.

Forced mutual dependency of the uneven kind shows in their silly patter than marks them out as too often praised for simply surviving birth.

We all did that -

and none of the work.

You turn the corner and see the shattered wall of the church, built so long ago. They bombed this to attack us, break our spirits. Oh silly, vain little men. That would not do it. Better follow the serpent child we bore, silent in the corner, slowly insinuating through sleepy lids and over-fed lips. And let us be our own worst enemy.