Death surrounds us all. Creeping tree limbs stretching across the blinding sky, and small patches of shade cast where brittle branches reach. It tricks us, mostly. The image so strange that our minds tell us it’s fall going on winter, with bare limbs in the hazy gray air.

Yet death breaks beneath our feet, and no leaves are left to be found. Life long lost to the dull grays and browns of the world, only high trunks left, empty inside. Space for termites to find shade within the sun-dried logs, our sun-dried skin matching their color.

Though, at least discrimination isn’t an issue when we’re all burnt the same, with the same burn in our hearts for some kind of freedom. Just a moment of cool escape from the rays of the sun that blind us. Something, anything to quench our cracking skin that blisters and bleeds to the touch, rough like bark.

The evening alarm is the only sound left in the air, a feeble sign of life traveling for miles with nothing left to hit. It calls us back to town, back to our shelters, back to toss yet another fallen soul. A schedule of work and rest only set apart by the dreaded ‘BANG BANG BANG’ heard far too many times each day. Like an old grandfather clock, set on the hour, yet so obnoxious it’s lost all meaning. It tells me to return; rejoice with the wasteland of thousands. Men in tattered clothing, bleached by the sun and stark against their bronzed skin. Hanging like old rags on crooked poles.

But for once, I don’t wish to return. Back to the shade, rations of warm water and bread, and soft chattering tones. To their lustful stares and loose, grazing hands that grasp me in all the wrong places. Skin wrapped plastic thin around their bones, with UV rays hugging them in the open sun like rope. A primal hunger in their eyes as they look me up and down; a piece of meat. Perhaps their next catch, if they so dared.

Though, they have yet to dare. For most of the hope and passion seeped out of us all long ago, the river of what makes us human run dry. Yet still, I don’t desire to tempt fate. Return from the dead forest of bones and emptiness each day, with fear in every step I take back towards them. Why give them the chance? To overpower, to own the last woman of our kind? Bring children, mere infants into such a cruel world to burn like the rest of us?

By now, the heat doesn’t bother me anymore. Nor the thousands of remains beneath my feet, or destroyed atmosphere above my head. The gangly dried branches welcome me, and I accept their brittle offerings. My back faces the town, and I leave to dry out like the rest.