Four 

By Brennan Storr 

We have always been here
Where the sugar cane sways without wind 
And the air is heavy and silent
As though before a storm. 

Mornings the same,
Brightness creeping through our cottage’s open door. 
We rise from dreamless sleep on straw pallets 
Stirring motes of dust into the light. 
 
After breakfast Isabel sweeps the floor
corn bristles scraping the planks clean
Maggie knits, clicking needles mending 
that which is worn. I watch over them both.
 
In the afternoon we run in the fields 
breathlessly playing hide and seek 
Our laughter rising above
The whisper of dried grass 
We have been alone together so long
our memories are withered
What is left comes through like bursts
Of static from distant stars – an embrace, tears, the sound of rain
  
Once upon a time we sought
Escape from this place, this life
By rope, by knife, by stone
and we came by violence unto peace
  
Yet every time we woke again
Rising from our pallets to find 
The bodies where they dropped
And our world unchanged.
Now Death has become our companion,
The fourth sister in our forever,
And the only thing we still fear
Is that we may outlive Her too.
  
We run past the eucalyptus tree
Where, dried by the sun, we hang
Three pretty parchment scarecrows 
In white linen dresses
  
Down the hill to the pond
we skip across our own backs
White linen lily pads, our
Long flaxen hair streaming in clear water
  
Into the vastness of a world we
Did not create and do not understand.
Into straw, and dust, and silence
And the smell of wildfire when the moon is full.
  
We have always been here
Where the sugar cane sways without wind
And the air is heavy and silent
As though before a storm. 
 
We have always been here.
We always will 

Brennan Storr is a Storyteller, producer and co-host of @theghoststoryguys podcast and author of: A Strange Little Place: The Hauntings & Unexplained Events of One Small Town

His book can be found on Amazon or Audible