Smeared

It sang beguiling songs of hope for the man who sat under the bridge and ate alone. There was no scene more distressing than what it had seen that day.
A bright day but no sun strung sunbeams in the sky space. Two kids with painted faces, one a clown with a smile for scars and the other a night with eyes for the stars, they ran like how shadows appear, faintly and at once. They laughed like prisoners on the electric chair.

Homeless kids – as beautiful as sadness, as alive as the wild woods. They howled in tones of tired drones because they were kids. They laughed and joked because they were kids. They looked back and smiled because they were kids. They leapt into their fates because they were kids.
And, kids they remained till their dying breath – for, homeless or orphans, crying or battered, weak or weakened, strong or solemn, right or rightful, normal or sensitive, living now dead – they were kids – beaconings of life – something to make of – fresh clay to be shaped into a vessel of a distant hope.
There they lay – dead, below the bridge, the eyes bled red for one, cried white for the other.

It sang beguiling songs of hope, the Grave,

‘No smiles shine on
ghosts of the past
Dead stars shine in
spirits of the future’

for the man who sat under the bridge and ate alone was the father of the freshly abandoned, newly lifeless kids. He eats the last bit of the dry bread loaf. He doesn’t cry, no tears can smear the momentary indecision in which the boys ran away and he never stopped them; only to listen the final screech and the last scream.