Life and Death: Short Piece
by Armando Ortiz
Yes, we all die
but that doesn’t answer the question
as to why.
Into this confusion we are born,
and just when we thought that this fusion,
of love and nature could endure,
your neighbor dies and
souls begin to knock on our door.
We end up visiting the hills where people,
still cold and stiff, are laid to rest
and every time we return, it seems that life’s
duress reveals its empty self in the shape of death,
where memory can no longer regress to that time when
lawns were used to play ball, and trees blanketed
us with that cool shade.
No one knows the suffering of others.
we walk kilometers forgetting that there are those,
who’ve trampled through the heat of humanity,
walked through valleys of glowing embers and silently
swallowed the bitter drink of life.
Broken remain those who hang from trees and tattered are
the happy times that we barely reclaim, yet
there is no prejudice with life and death.
It’s the stuff in between that stirs waters,
that creates hurricanes and tsunamis
of labels and names, and
painful experience.
