For Aleppo

Prompt: Sky

// The sky once seemed to hold such peace. So far above our broken world, so “out there” and mysterious. So promising, as though holding all the possibilities of hope. Hope of a coming deliverance from this war zone.

But now there is no longer hope. There is only numbness. The illusion of peace residing in the firmament has been dispelled. No fulfilled promise came from the sky, only further destruction. Do they seek to help us or harm us? I do not know. 

I can only look around me now, at the dust settling over everything turning it to an archeological dig waiting to happen. “And then there was a great catastrophe and the society was decimated. But you can see how certain elements of their lives were perfectly preserved for us….” //

The dust falls like a shroud over the remnants of the life that used to be here. Curtains to close on the last act in the drama of these lives. A sudden ending that wasn’t wrapped up correctly. This story has not been developed well. But I can no longer fathom that there was any thread of a story after all. No one was guiding this string of horrors. I cannot find the faith to believe in such a one. And I can no longer look at the sky.

This doesn't really at all fit my 31 Days theme of reflections based on "Simply Tuesday" but it was what flooded my mind when I was gazing at the peaceful sky last night and was shaken by thoughts of what the people of Aleppo have been experiencing. It is hard to reconcile my peaceful patch of sky with the horrors they are facing. I pray they will find the only peace that can hold them in the midst of this and restore them later, despite the seeming impossibility of such a faith.