The air is silent, still in mourning.
After 72 years.
The only inanimate survivor of the atomic bomb stands before us, proud of its resilience. On the top, there is a naked dome, with ring beams as shriveled as metal can be.The windows are empty, but some of them are incomplete, like gaping mouths. The walls, stripped to their bricks, are only brown and black. The bricks are still in their place. The bricks are slightly displaced. The tourists stare at the wounds of the structure. A cat enters the ruins, pawing at the fallen bricks. What once used to be a promotion hall, is now a ruined witness to one of the greatest crimes. Broken, burnt, and blackened.
Bandaged, but never healed.
We walk around the dome, imagining, wondering, what we never could. The day it happened. It was as if the sun had fallen upon them. The fire that burst in their sky, making temperatures burn their roofs and tiles, their glass bottles and tricycles. Wood was charred, metal beams fused. People, burnt to ash. Their skin melted off their bodies, flesh and blood indistinguishable. Clothes burnt with raw skin. Lives burnt to ash.
When they knelt for forgiveness, for mercy, to die, it rained. They opened their mouths, gaping, thirsty for life, but their tongues were charred by black ash. They fell down. If they had imagined Hell, it was magnanimous.  It was red and black all around.
The whispering leaves, perhaps marveling at the peaceful structure, bring me back. I realise that I have walked to the other side. One can’t slip here, the ground is so rough. When the ground had melted and formed again, its skin was scarred.
Hear some pleasant conversation around the side. One of human survivors is talking about his experience, after the bombing with a tight smile. He has white hair scattered on his head. Next to him, a book titled ‘That Day’ is kept on his bicycle. The other is sitting on a stool, teaching a young boy to fold an a peace paper crane.
I can smell the stream, which flows close by, and the peace.
I walk by the fountains towards the hypocentre of the bombing. The branches of the bushes surround the fountain are dry, and bare, with leaves only at the tips. They are brown, and short. Where they split, they resemble rough, begging hands. Their fingers spit open towards the sky, in a prayer.
The hypocentre is next to a hospital.
I look up. The sky is clear, but what I really see is the pictures they showed at the museum. What must it have been, to drop a bomb and obliterate a city. To evaporate a city full of dreams and wishes. To have busy lives vanish into the air.
A chill passes through me. I walk ahead.
This is an experience from a trip to the Atomic Bomb Dome to Hiroshima.