Hiroshima

The bomb fell quietly on the sleeping city. The bombadier was insouciant. It was just part of his job. The trembling buildings cascading into dust was not a sight he witnessed. All he saw, as he headed for home, was the plume, the mushroom cloud, the darkening skies. Striped with ash of humans.
He was feted in his own country, with rosettes of celandines and daisies. Well it was the end of a long war. The principles of thrift and want still prevailed throughout the country.
But back on the ground, where once there were buildings, communities and fields of rosebuds, now only shadows where poeple had been blasted into walls. The fields alive with children running helter skelter, free and happy, now silent. Just the odd pilgrim in rags. People losing their minds upon realisation that they alone had survived. One left in a village echoing silence.
A grandfather, standing by a jetty in rags, but living in order to nurture his grandson. To educate him amidst an inundation of poverty and pain. The love this grandfather feels is expressed daily to this slip of a boy. It is his vindication of right over wrong.
The sun keeps rising each day, and the music of the storks returning to the city is another incentive to the old man. And a gesture of joy to the boy. Together they eat rice, and as the grandfather tells his stories of days gone by, the days before the bomb dropped, the bond which has been forged will once again be broken.
Because, the boy has to depart to another island with another person, a social worker, where there will be schools full of books and other children to play with who have survived.
But the boy does not want to leave his grandfather and he clings to his ragged pants but the old man knows it is for the best. Their hearts are breaking.
The social worker knows it is just part of his job.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule