A People's History

 He loved finding books. The weight of them in his hands, the way they opened, the delicate pages turned by his hand, or wind. They felt so mysterious as his eyes moved from line to line. Most of the time the pages had become dry and brittle. Occasionally they would flake into the air. A gust of wind touched his worn clothes. He closed his eyes and tried to remember his mother's face. She had been beautiful. Her smile, the memory of it, made him smile. Her voice, what did her voice sound like? It once sang him to sleep. When had he last heard it? He felt a tear forming at the corner of his eye, wanting to escape and weave down the slopes of his cheeks. There were no memories of his father. He let the book fall from his hands. It was no good to him, even if he had known what it said. His stomach rumbled. Soon, it would be insistent. He walked down the cracked and over grown highway, towards a state that no longer existed, in a country that was only a memory.