The End of the Beginning

April 3, 1972

They say that the truth is sometimes best left unspoken. 

But if you do so, when will you ever speak?

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Although thirty years have lapsed since I first stepped into the Manzanar desolation, a queer familiarity echoes throughout the uninhabited despondence. Yet, a fragile hope suspends itself on the thinnest  tenacious cobweb, as if alluding to the precarious fate isolated in this now forgotten memory. Listen, the wind cries feebly, listen for me. Only even the memories reluctantly elude my defeated vicinity. Time has become decrepit  in an interim too brief, revering the only bond that I had once shared with venerable sky and earth, perpetual wind and water.

But then I see the shadows, the silhouettes of laughing men and women, walking an endless breadth of hope.They are like the ghosts of the living dead, a sentry of a realm beyond recognition. 

Silence steals the air. 

I had chased a dream once, but the revelation of its utter futility came at a turning point too late. Yet, I gathered a solace within me, that perhaps someday I would unclasp my bitter restraints, and life would undo itself for me to follow the fate that was meant to be.

Too late, too late.

Little did I know of the lamentable truth, that when time evades a flippant grasp, it will never reincarnate again.

-------------------------

"Mama?" I whisper desperately. "Papa?"

Gazing across the empty firebreak, a wave of remorse rages spontaneously within me. I lie in a bed of wayward mist - of distinct nothingness. The throne hovers above me again, so wretchedly close to my palm, yet so hopelessly far away.

"Jeanne?" A timid voice flutters in the breeze.

"Mama?"

Then I see them, an image of yesterday, but the inextinguishable flower of tomorrow. A silver baton lurches gracefully across a glittering blue sky, and laughter rings from the nearby cafeteria hall.Children swarm about the Manzanar internment school, conversing passionately of their future ideals, their hopes and desires.

But most importantly, I see the daunting figure of Papa, an unnatural smile curled dolefully across his lips. Even when submerged beneath his unbreakable oblivion, he held his streak of defiance, his cane of indefatigable conduct. And it was this that eventually led to my understanding of Manzanar and what it truly stood for.

I know what you can only say when you've come to truly know a place...

...Farewell.