The Marsh--David Oropeza

When the body racks up numbers, it’s strange what routine can pacify and more strange how frightful one gets without it. There ain’t a wind that moves a dead leaf here in this marsh. Deadness can grow too. Give life to still more deadness. One forgets that easy, one thinks you’re alive when one has been long sleeping away in a hundred-foot-deep marsh. And the voices of living come about you like a cushion to deafen a blow. I have not felt a hand in my heart for sometime time; why is it when it comes, it feels cold?