Filthy Holes

He smiles to himself and hums a tune to a song no one knows.  He tends to his garden in the middle of the surrounding asphalt and cement.  He quickens his pace, as he sees the sun start to drop behind the looming giants of the past.  Spires of steel and glass, long forgotten and left uncared for, he thinks about that sinful age, when man played god, and made suns of their own.  He is oblivious to how true that thought is.  Pulling the last of the weeds, he looks over his garden, proud of the crop he knows it will yield.  He wipes the the rich dark soil from his hands, the smell of it overwhelms his senses for a moment.  He stops still and lifts his head as he hears a voice call out his name from somewhere behind him, he smiles as she comes down the steps.

She has light brown hair, the kind that reminds you of coffee after two creamers.  A complete contrast to the black soot on her cheeks and brow from cleaning out the house.  Her smile lights up his face, she opens one of her hands to show him two crisp cigarettes she'd just finished rolling.  With his hand in hers they started their slow walk.  Though they had only been in their new home for a dozen days they had gone walking every night, always sure to head in a different direction or make an unfamiliar turn.  Tonight, with the last hour of light waning, the path they walked turned from cracked asphalt to gravel.  Each step a crunching shift of tiny dirty pebbles, dust lifting up to resettle over their beaten shoes.  As they came upon a crumpled building, he stopped, so did she.  He stared at the caved in rubble and mounds of gravel and he was reminded of home.

They had met there, home that is, back in a land that seemed surrounded by nothing but rocks and gravel and hills.  Their parents, like everyone else there, struggled to grow what they could, to raise their families.  He was the only child and his mother had passed giving birth, his father was a strong man, and he always made sure that there was food.  When cool months and wild dogs came from the north he was taught how to shoot and to be fearless.  Her family was the opposite, she had two sisters and two brothers, as well as both parents.  Their home was filled with books and all of them were taught how to write and read.  They didn't even own a gun, much less learn how to shoot one.

As the last visible tip of the sun drops out of sight, he looks over at her, the burning joint illuminating her face.  He is instantly reminded of how beautiful she is, of how he felt when he first met her, among  those mounds of filthy gravel.