The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2022

The Meadow 193 The Hands of Che Guevara Patrick Dawson The morning of vivid color has paled to a white silence. Motionless lizards cling to walls, to the black skeletons of trees. In the marketplace, the shops and stalls are all shuttered against the heat except for one ancient mestiza who sits under the shadow of a tree with her brightly colored cloths. Her lips are parted in prayer. Perhaps in answer, a slight breeze stirs her white hair. In the quiet, a boy’s cart makes the barbed sound of metal on the stones, the empty road that leads to the sea. Marina sits alone, listening to the beat of boy footsteps passing the cantina window. Sandy told her more than once he would make it out to the sea, but he never did. Across the plaza, there is the small square of trees where he sought to hide. She won’t allow herself to look there, where a garden is now planted with yellow and white flowers. At the top of the church, where the Madonna sits, sunlight strikes pale gold script: Los Santos Martires. The Holy Martyrs. There is an urgent beat of memory then. It is as though she is the sole listener to a countless sea of murmurs. She feels light and floating, the moment amplified by stillness and the immobile shimmering heat and the once familiar smells. An instant in which the image draws near and once more, impossibly, it is just after dark and she hears the random notes tiptoe again from the open window. The barest smile forms. Years fall away, petals from a flower yielding to time. “It was a long time ago...” Somehow, she can hear the old man’s voice again and agrees. Marina wishes she could turn to him and tell him so. As always, the thought of the voice is melodic and soothing. A voice of abandoned days. She focuses on the sound of the voice and the rhythmic notes only she hears, the counterpoint they

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