RELIEF WORKER

We pointed a flare gun at the stars, mesmerized by there stoic statuesque embrace, held captive in the worlds of our heads. Earlier that afternoon we had ripped the wood paneling off of the window frames and taken them out completely, only to find it made no difference; summer is hot; South America is relentless.
Karsus had come up after hearing all of our noise and saw the three huge gaping holes in the walls and told us to put curtains up.
‘De people see you from de outside,’ he said. ‘Coverid up.’
We left the rooms stained with sweat, like dogs shedding away our coats, out onto the wet tile of the balcony that stretched around the school like a deadline.
Over and again we went over our inventory, the things we were forced to carry through the dark nights of those hot days. Heavy rucksacks like weeping children strapped to our backs, bags filled with the bricks of things.
Plastic gloves and flashlights. Ponchos and cigarettes.
In the streets of Santa Cruz we watched the farmers tie themselves together with chains, brandishing signs that rebelled against their government. We thought nothing of it, our shoulder dull from the weight of our box cutters and containers of butane, bic lighters and heat tabs.
Can openers and several bars of shitty soap.
Jaron spat and cussed in low Louisiana drawl, hefting extra laces and bug juice, toothpaste and carpentry knee pads. Trip tens and packs of bungee chords, blue jeans and blankets.
Out on the tiles we went shirtless laying on our backs, just us and the maps that God had long ago made in the far above, tracing constellations with our fingers amidst piles of plasma bottles and packs of Atropine.
Avinza and Dopamine tablets.
Butterfly stitches.
I stretched my hand out over a coupling of empty blood bags, looked left in a half drunk sleep to see the Malaria tablets spilling out of my ruck. Up above just the stars like a thousand headlamps of explorers who weren’t coming back.
Needles and thread, surgical tape.
‘Which ones?’
‘What?’
‘Which ones do you think hold other worlds?
The ash on the stem of my cigarette forming a leaning tower, ready to crumble like old testament cities, ready to lay in ruin until washed away by the floods that God makes in a rare burst of fury.
‘Chest seals,’ I said. ‘Stitch kits and syringes.’
‘Waterproof sharpies.’
‘Tourniquette bandages.’
‘Regular bandages.’
‘Gauze bandages.’
‘Gauze rolls. Gauze tape.’
‘Electrical tape,’ it became a game.
We recited these things until they had no meaning.
And then when the killing started the constellations faded, the explorers disappeared into their caves of black space.
And we were left with only what we carried in our rucks.