Hungry Wonder

Dad said, “They’re eating us alive.”

Like locusts, one and then many, swarming over store fronts and houses, filling themselves with our home.

They’re eating the shell of the church. Shutters click, flashes from hungry, glass eyes lit the broken walls again and again as they claw at the spaces where the windows were blasted out. With little knives and markers they leave their names and scribbled condolences before they nibble away their souvenirs from the crumbling edges.

The hive drones noisily, half truths and trivia regurgitated over ruins, making national treasures from shell shrapnel.

It’s patriotic to snatch it all up; in boxes, bags, pockets and hands. They carry it home for mantle pieces and memento boxes. They pack our land for takeaway cartons and carry-on bags to be picked over with cocktails and family photo albums.

They’re starved; slavering jaws searching for even the smallest taste of grief.