Razed

‘After those days it was as if I’d been razed. I couldn’t think or talk in the same way. I couldn’t go back, but I was still in the same place, picking for new growths in the rubble. And the old mist still hung over things. What could replace all I’d known? I didn’t even know what words to use, my own seemed part of the mist, or the rubble. But I saw living things here and there, strong and brief.’