Posts Tagged ‘sacrifices’

Tonight is the New Moon, the sky is a perfect expanse of black with sparkly rhinestone stars.  And tomorrow I will have to put up the newest list released.  But a yearly task of remembering the dead was the occasion tonight.

I laid a bed of charcoal and burned fragrant coffee beans for the dead Iraqi and Afghani allies whose names never make the American press.

Then I poured whiskey in a big iron cauldron that would hold three gallons of liquid if full, and attempted to light it  afire.  It refused to ignite.  We added something higher octane to coax the flames.  I guess 80 proof is not sufficiently comforting to the spirits whose names I recited once it began to burn?

Tonight was the once a year when the entire list since last Oct 31st is read aloud–this year with a tone of the bell for each name.  I don’t know how many there are, I read them from a roll of hand-written names on adding machine paper. I don’t want to know the year’s count.  I was reading a long time.  And then I walked the Labyrinth again singing to them….surely their families all miss them more than I possibly could, having never met them.  But all the same, my heart feels hollow.