They moved like slow rivers across
the land, their faces tangled with shadow
and dust. Beards grew like the roots of
trees, rough, unyielding, under the weight
of days. Their knapsacks pulled down
their backs, like mountains leaning toward
the earth, heavy with unsung stories.
In the journal, she wrote of their
hands, calloused, smelling of iron,
of how their eyes carried the distance
of fields left behind. She said the sky
seemed to fold over them like a tired
blanket, wrapping their tired bodies.
They marched through the bones
of silence, past the forests that remembered
other wars, their feet grinding the earth
into dust, into memory. Each step was
a letter unsent, a song caught between
the wind and their breath.
When the sun rose, it weighed
on their shoulders like a command,
and their beards grew longer, the trees
seemed to whisper their names, roots
entwined with their slow, measured
hearts, their heavy knapsacks.