Fal­lac­ies in the Phi­los­o­phy of Survival

In a pur­ple field (which only occurs with the exact ratio of dusk.
And Spring. And our city dis­solv­ing into flame behind us) we walked
toward the west; stum­bling over rocks and down the sides of small
moun­tains. Direc­tion and pro­por­tion are sly like that, like a loosely
imag­ined Mecca—like firearms strapped to your back can resem­ble
a shin­ing set of wings. The beholder must decide what it is she sees.
There were warn­ings to not look back, rumor of failed attempts

to escape— the immi­grants imme­di­ately trans­formed into pil­lars;
oth­ers suf­fered slowly, unable to return to the lethal vil­lage—
unwill­ing to let the sight out­side their vision. When the bod­ies
were dis­cov­ered, the archae­ol­o­gists found zero signs of wounds
that would infer a grue­some battle—only: “hand after pet­ri­fied hand
…posi­tioned as a shield over their skele­tal brows as if entranced—

as if immo­bi­lized by some far­away image…” (the loca­tion of the dig
was one mile from the ruins.) A woman becomes bit­ter, stares out
to the bit­ter cold. I can­not stay / I have nowhere to go. We took
to the field. Beneath us: a breed­ing ground for torn beholders

buried deep in the pur­ple earth. We were armed and ready to open
fire—to ascend beneath our ter­ror mech­a­nisms or a super­nat­ural
trans­porta­tion sys­tem—depend­ing on the beholder’s will­ing­ness
to sur­vive. From behind: a sun unleashed assur­ances of Spring. Ici­cles
dis­as­sem­bled from barbed wire trees, as the fence sur­round­ing our home–
land thawed: by nature? By fire? From fric­tion cre­ated by a storm of feet

decid­ing. West, you said. I’ll carry you, you said. (It was no longer
win­ter when a woman would not leave her cathe­dral.) Dusk,
I said. Dark­ness, you said—walking in the direc­tion of a set­ting sun
is like walk­ing through the set­ting of a fic­ti­tious story; how will we end?
Where is this going? “…and here, it appears, is where the evi­dence ceased
to mat­ter…” Pil­lars of salt, a cathe­dral shat­tered. Home, I wept. Fairy­tale,
you told me. When you lifted your weapon: I saw a wing, unfolding—