The Black Heart Procession
2

The procession advances. Five? Ten? A hundred people? I don't know, I can't tell, all dressed in black like that they are indistinguishable, they look like a dark ink stain sliding on a marble surface. They advance with the same slow, staggering pace, right, left, right, left, sometimes it seems they dance, they linger before taking the next step, almost ballet-like, but they don't stop: hooded heads bowed, they carry on their shoulders a white coffin, which on their curved shoulders almost looks like a beam of light shot from a lighthouse in a stormy night. On the lid of the coffin just one inlay, a beautiful black heart.

It's hot, the air is still and the cicadas sing, it feels like being inside a Joy Division piece, yet the music is different. You hear a trombone, a trumpet, an accordion, a piano, while a suffering voice, somewhere between drunken and melancholic, slurs words of disappointment, sadness, and abandonment, coming from someone within the procession, but who? Meanwhile, the tears keep flowing, the marchers cry as they march. Who died, who is inside the coffin? We don't know, maybe there's no one, maybe it's all of us, or at least a part of us, a piece of our hearts that, for some reason, has cracked, divided, only to wither and dry up devoid of the vital sap of love.
They say this is the group's second procession. I don't know, it's the first I've witnessed. They say the first one wasn't as captivating, and those that will come after won't reach the same level of involvement: I don't find it hard to believe.

The procession advances: right, left, right, left... The piano plays its heavy tolls, the notes are the steps of the marchers, the dark tide parades before my eyes and fades into the horizon.
...right, left, right, left...