Border

It was a mere two kilometers. Day workers rode their bicycles back and forth, daily. It was open now, people coming and going. No interrogations. No fears. Not even apprehension. Barely a crossing.

But not that long ago, in this lifetime, in even a relatively youngish lifetime, this was a crossing. Something to be undertaken. Or not.

And in walking these two kilometers, there were the spirits of those who had crossed, had fled, had feared. The border was now only silently marked by a wooden stake in the ground. That was all. But the forests, the fields, the lookouts, they all held memory. And the ghosts of memory came out from the darkness, trudged through the rain, the mud, the empty-handed emigration following a road to the other side, across the border.