We ran the wind out of town.
It blew too hard for anyone
to even think, forget about
business, government, making
love. Before it left it had
been blowing for four hundred
and three days. Afterward,
the stillness was deafening.
We all sat still. We didn’t
dare to shuffle our papers or
slurp our soup. We walked
on tiptoe through the barren
streets. We crept up
to the top of the buildings
hoping for something, a breeze
or a zephyr or even a sigh.
We tried to make our own wind
but it fizzled after a few
feet. The sun soon became
its own problem. We baked
in our houses and drank
the wells dry. We dried up,
cured like leather, like
typhoid. We imagined the wind
that wouldn’t come would
blow our corpses away.
It blew too hard for anyone
to even think, forget about
business, government, making
love. Before it left it had
been blowing for four hundred
and three days. Afterward,
the stillness was deafening.
We all sat still. We didn’t
dare to shuffle our papers or
slurp our soup. We walked
on tiptoe through the barren
streets. We crept up
to the top of the buildings
hoping for something, a breeze
or a zephyr or even a sigh.
We tried to make our own wind
but it fizzled after a few
feet. The sun soon became
its own problem. We baked
in our houses and drank
the wells dry. We dried up,
cured like leather, like
typhoid. We imagined the wind
that wouldn’t come would
blow our corpses away.