Comments
Loading Dream Comments...
You must be logged in to write a comment - Log In
Retablo of the Fence Made from What Was Left A fence stretches across the bottom edge of the tin, constructed from chairs, tools, slogans, and one broken ideal labeled temporary. Behind it, a communal field grows unevenly— some plots wild, some bare, none owned the way ownership was imagined. Above, no judgment scene, just weather moving through. This retablo is nailed up for the knowledge that living together does not fail— it ends, and endings are materials too.
The fence arrived the way all necessary things do—without permission and after the fact. Nobody planned it. Nobody voted. One morning it was simply there, a line drawn low across the land from whatever had survived the arguments: folding chairs with sun-cracked backs, a table that once hosted meetings that ran too long, a slogan painted on scrap wood promising temporary like it was mercy instead of delay.
Behind it, the field kept its own counsel. Grass rose where it felt like rising. Dirt stayed naked where hope had been overused. No boundaries matched the old diagrams. Ownership dissolved into weather, and the weather didn’t care who had spoken last. A cow grazed like a professional skeptic, unimpressed by ideology, committed only to the next mouthful.
This was supposed to be a place where everything was shared—meals, labor, futures. What they didn’t budget for was exhaustion. The slow kind. The kind that doesn’t announce itself with drama but shows up quietly, wearing the face of another meeting. The kind that makes people stack chairs into fences because it’s easier than stacking feelings.
The fence didn’t keep anyone out. It barely kept its balance. That was the point. It marked the end of believing that closeness automatically produces harmony. It suggested—politely but firmly—that proximity is not the same thing as understanding. It said: here is where we stopped pretending.
Above it all, the sky kept moving, unconcerned. No verdict. No angels. Just clouds passing like old friends who remember you differently than you remember yourself. Sunlight fell on the yellow chair as if it had always been meant for that exact moment, a throne for no one in particular.
They nailed the retablo up not to warn future travelers, but to remind themselves. Living together does not collapse in flames. It simply runs out of road. What’s left—chairs, tools, half-kept promises—becomes the material record. Endings aren’t failures. They’re inventory.
And the field goes on, uneven and honest, growing whatever it can from what remains.
