to the wolves

I am awakened in the middle of the night. I try to sleep but cannot.

And then in my head a haunting scene plays out like a dream yet I am awake.

A little girl’s face. She looks detached, her eyes a deep brown, her hair dark and curly and disheveled. She is dressed in a pale white and paper thin shirt yet there is snow on the ground. Her face is dirty. Her eyes glimmer and dance between emptiness and sadness. She does not look at anything and yet she stares intently.
There is movement in front of her, but I cannot tell what it is. Then I seem to know that it is a woman. The child’s mother. She is dressed in a heavy coat and I know she has just placed this little girl on the ground. I can feel that there is no emotion in this woman. She is colder than the wind that wraps its icy fingers around that little girl. The movement if but only for a couple of seconds then she is gone.

it is so cold…

Then my perspective is far above this scene. The girl is but a small figure barely visible against the snow around her. In an open field. And the mother is walking away. Her footprints leaving a single trail away from the child. I can feel the bitter cold but this woman cannot.

Then I am close to this sad little girl again. Her face obscures my view of anything else. She cannot see me but I can see her. Like a dream.

Then my perspective is from above again. My spine shivers, not from the cold, but because some distance around her I can see wolves circling. I know they are hungry.

And they are closing in.








I know she is going to die. Because no one cares.