Yard Sale of Thoughts

I spot another chair leg sticking out from a pile and start to tug.

“There can never be enough seats at the last supper,” Drusel jokes, joining me in my excavation.  My little brother and I are the only survivors from our building. 

The skyline is a triage of damaged homes. Looking left and right, I realize, we too are rubble. Crumbing people, covered in a dust that has surely invaded our lungs. We are debris in the twilight of our use. 

 The bombing has been over for hours, but we still feel the aftershock.

“Even our enemies need time to eat,” Drusel says, making a bunch of survivors laugh as he lifts the liberated seat overhead and puts it at one of the few remaining spots.

The table is the largest I’ve ever seen, snaking its way through the gutted neighborhood, a series of red tablecloths conceal missing chunks and burn marks.

“We’ll be fed when the sun collapses,” says the bearded man beside me, his voice matter-of-fact. 

“And how do you know that, sir? If I might ask.”

This is my first post-bombing feast, so it never occurred to me that someone survived multiple ones.

“Ten in, young one. But you never know. Every time, it’s like the roll of the dice.”

The man lifts his fork and taps the edge of a chipped glass. This seems to get the attention of the fifty or so other attendees seated in parallel rows across from each other at the makeshift banquet table.

Then, the bearded man rises to speak.

“New friends,  old friends, and everyone in between.  In this desperate place we find ourselves, remember we are alive! Be it heavy with grief.”

A moment of silence follows.

“Some of you have seen horrors of which you will never speak, but it’s tradition for the oldest to share, and so, as I was told, for what we are served, we must be truly grateful. Be mindful of each bite. What you consume could be forever. And so, a toast to the evening and to surviving the feast.”

Glasses raise. Something red, something white appears. A wine fills each goblet. And as we drink, the day disrobes, and we are left with the starkness of night, the kind of dark that changes things. 

The rags on each of us transformed to rich tapestries of golden thread and story. The plates before us overflowed with cheese, and meat, and breads more than most eyes have ever seen.

“How could this be?” I ask, but no one answers.

To eat is to live, and so, we tackle our full plates with the ferocity of the flames we’ve escaped, the flames we carry inside of us still.

©2025|K.F.Hartless

---

Cover Art: People gather beside the rubble of destroyed buildings for a huge communal iftar (fast-breaking meal) on the second day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the area of al-Dahduh, in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa district, on March 2, 2025. #