So dense is the silence in town, just a handful of crows inspecting footprints, breathing the stillness of air where the scent of fritters, just an hour ago, had been.
The hour then replaced by muffled drama and game shows, dinner now served in bowls, the watchers and eaters both no longer aware of the town behind them. Filtered by plane of perspex as strong as their will that says the wooden establishment is a home and home it shall be, and not a barber shop.
Because evening has fallen over Sungkai.
The Lady of Silk, our grandmother, having thus took her pardon from the world, took also away with her the mornings of this place. The burdened mornings when awoke to a town so strange. The mornings when one understands nothing outside; when all is only safe in the womb and connected by the umbilical cord, her form and presence speaks to our souls. That vibration and cadence we recognise as love, as mother, as Goddess holds us all in an air of amniotic dome.
But evening has fallen over Sungkai.
As she makes the final push, setting us on our own way in the world, relieved of womb and cord, the blood bond. For we have come to understand the world and know it, connect with it through sight and sound, and touch; so the Matriach goes on, devoid of worry for her children. A death, that is also a birth that sends her on to a new place, cared for by another, cherished and celebrated forever.
So, come. The peace of evening, fall over Sungkai.
