The Road Beneath Our Feet

Like Every Other Day

Paris, an excavation found hundreds of skeletons

The day when skeletons were found in
Paris, dead leaves made the ground slippery where

a handful of children disputed a swing, while their
mothers, resting, hung onto their own thoughts.

That day, people were talking to strangers, dreams
were born and died. Somewhere, trees were falling

pulling up the soil with their roots, and between
layers of earth moved by working machines and

the power of shoulders, suddenly a silent crowd
of bones, neatly composed in rows as if planted

in a garden that would be destroyed
To make way for the new supermarket.

— Sabine Pascarelli