Marching

Since I was born I don’t recall other than this column, a marching multitude of which one does not see the beginning nor the end, exhausted under a dark sky, in a valley between mountains with invisible peaks, feet mashing slush, ceaselessly passing around small hard loaves and ladles of water. Every now and then someone falls and is left, the other stamp their numb feet, try to be strong and continue.

Where are we going? Who makes the bread? I remember asking as a child. The gray figures around me, that must have been my father, my mother, looked at me frightened and hurried their pace until I saw them no more. I have learned. Now I just walk.