I

I was told that faces persist, could wear away pebble, wind, and sand. Rivers, long and winding, and the rain, always so strange, mingle with rippling ashes of our ancestors, their fingers dipping through charcoal powder, tracing animals over stone’s face, carving bodies out of empty space, faded faces on walls. We are not a dream, they were saying. Not flashes of an aged old dream. Sand-like memory, look for us.