What Remains of the Day

Before I knew about what remains of the day, I could hear the whistling of the forests’ songs linger; the presence of what was once a society now evanesced along the lapless hills before becoming a memory. My ears cringe with fear as the ringing blurs deep inside that memory, like a flashback, it eclipses my singeing flesh, raw with pink-white palette melting and contorting. I feel the fine blades of grass that used to dance with flurry, now choked in broken, arid earth. My soles sink, bringing up colorful bits beneath the soil. Just past, I watch the crooked streams flow with a prismatic film, left behind by the coughing plant upstream; its trails of smoke escape from the crimson high towers afar, away from the people, but unavoidable to the pleasant, pedestrian life that rummages through the crumpled leaves, or that which drinks from the stream.

With each step, I tread in the muddy remains of perennial flowers; their color deflated and depleted, spilling into the stream like watercolor paint that separates, rather than swirls into a bright mélange of the setting sun's reflection. Scars and cancers ride the length of the bark; they crackle and chip at the edges, leaning away as if they were trying to leap from the ground. Through the naked limbs and fractured branches reaching high, the clouds no longer swirl with ivory cotton fibers fraying in the wind; the hum of the plant chittering as it crawls high above the thin, decaying thicket. Ordinarily, the gentle leaves of the oaks and spruces sway like the coming tides; the listless dragging of which scrapes away chunks of seashells as if they were fine porcelain shards. My eyes scan through the shrouds of gray that kindle on the forest floor beneath nature’s canopies for fauna.

The hum then shrieks like a child and crashes, before leaving a faint monotonous tone like the slow release of hydrogen in the dawning hours. I follow the synocapted droning despair, yelling from the peak where the plant lies bare. It reverberates through my tender flesh, swirling through that organ and bouncing against that springy skin like a jazz band in a cabaret, shrouded in the noise. The pain surges through every member and limb, jerking me erect as my hands curl and cringe; the jolts melt the spongy flesh deep within my skull.

I continue onward and glance over the cracked rouge and concrete ash cakes of the sweeping fields of the steppes that once were flooded for rice; my eyes stand with tears as each wave breaks before me. The stream had grown, now a wavering flood that flows past me toward the sea; flowers wilt with the sooty breeze. The grass was no longer its verdant green; instead, it crumbled into charcoal crumbs with each step, scorched beyond recognition. The steel plates and bare metal curl like a blooming flower, reflecting the sun's rays before me, coaxing me forward into the mistake up ahead.

I lean over to find the remains of the noxious plant, revealed without a cloud in sight, as the cavernous hole wakes like a howling maw. I look up at the high towers puffing away ceaselessly. The high tower’s smoke soars as I come upon what remains of the day: a hollow wake sinks some forty leagues below; sparks erupt from frayed wire and illuminate the hollow pit as moans call, crying the horrors of tomorrow.