When Nothing is the Same

         When Nothing Is The Same:
Memories of Guernica

I heard her say, in her old age when she was weary and alone and no one was listening,
"Nothing will ever be the same."
         She spoke the words as sacred, under her breath with a flash of every pain in the world on her eyes.  But then it was gone; the pain, the sacred words, the memory and the sorrow.  She would knit the rest of her eves away, lost in nothingness, rocking gently back and forth without any knowledge of such a prior life. 
         Night though was not the same.
         Night was dark, it was different from the day.
Night made sounds that drew her confused and fragile mind back to things that she no longer even knew.  She never said words, never a name or a word, but every dark detail was etched in the contorted lines of her face.  She did not cry, tears rarely on her cheek, but she whimpered; softly and full of echoes, with emotion stronger than anything I'd ever known.  Behind her eyes in the shadowy refuges of dreams lay pain.
         Twisted Fire and burning flesh masked all happiness she had ever known.  The jagged screams of an infant fighting for it's last breath were all she could hear.  The clash of terror around her, drawn together in this child's desperation.  And she, unable to stop any of the rain that death was pouring down laid on the ground, mouth open, arms out, praying that if there was a God anywhere, he would save this child...But there was either no God to hear her vigil, or there was nothing that He could do.  So death continued to fall down on them.
         But death grew weak, finally ran out of raindrops and ceased it's melancholy escapade.
The child was cold and still, as was her heart.  She, who lay trapped on the ground, assaulted by undescribable grief; looked up to heavens and breathed the cry of her soul to the universe;
"Nothing will ever be the same..."