Before They Found Her

Tight and wet over her full blue lips – a maple leaf wrapped like an amber palm holding protests back – and her eyes opened to the big empty – a blue bowl of winter sky - cloudless witness – damp, green, departed to sights beyond her resting place in this park’s snow blanketed meadow. Alabaster cheeks and one or two locks of red hair.

Chilled and solitary she lay in wait for her eventual discovery. Her last message, prepared for the first to find her, but ready to deliver before she left us altogether.

Red in White

Now this! A small girl with black hair and brown laughing eyes entered the room- the room, white- except for one red vase that sat like a big plum on the mantle. Then, she broke the vase – on purpose – high kicking it with her foot wrapped as it was in a striped sock.

So, she stood still the way deer do when the crack of a small twig (or the approach of a wolf) penetrates their sanctity.

With one hand, then the other, she lifted the tumbled vase back onto its base. She returned three vibrant shards to their places near the rim. Then she left, chased by the bounce of her own giggle as it followed her through the off-white doorway.