Today, sister and I visited
an apartment for viewing.
Smaller than my lungs, it
felt like a fragment of a rock
among rocks scattered in the sand.
I was unable to ask for more
of other kinds, and my sister
stood still near the entrance.
But there was a brick wall
above a furnace, and I saw
it was much darker burgundy,
had order and weight and
dignity like the Great Wall
of China which people wished
to see from the Earth’s low orbit.
Each time when surveys
were given to us asking what places
we wanted to travel to, I wrote down
the Great Wall of China, though
I knew I could only walk for days
or years and might die in the middle
of walking like those hundreds of
thousands of workers who died
building the fortification.
Onto the brick wall I leaned,
how cold it was! Similarly, down
to the bottom might have been
buried piles of corpses waiting
to share their withered flesh,
their bread, their eminent labor.
The dead were dead although
there were those who died and
rose again. Did any of them know
the Christ? The door shut after
my sister. I too let them see me leave.
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