Piece by piece, the houses are dismantled while she waits inside. The roof lifts up to meet the sky. Chairs and tables burn in the school yard and the dead relatives sit silently in silver frames. A boy in a gas mask soaks the images in kerosene. Her clothes rest on hangars in the center of the town.
Someone shines a flashlight on a baby carriage left on the sidewalk, on a pile of women's shoes.
They tell her even the trees are poison. Each trunk must be razed to the ground. To start over, remove every branch, each leaf. In a line the cars follow the scar of the old road to another city. Once this river ran black with dye from the factories.