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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

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