"The Girl" work in progress...

The girl had always been in more than the usual rush to grow up and as she sat feeling the slow trail of blood slide it’s way over the contours of her thick, parched lips, she thought maybe this was where it’s at.



Being in such a rush, she had failed in creating any of those memories most people struggle to hold on to as the years pass, the ones they fall back to when the bills gather and the dishes pile and the people who are meant to be the closest to you are squeezed amongst the nine to five and you forget who you are and why you’re in the place you’re in and where it is you’re going.



She had never been anything but unremarkable, that much she knew of herself and was more than content with the way this knowledge allowed her to move through the years uninterrupted and with an ease that others envied.



Because of the sense of urgency the girl used to propel herself past life’s many milestones, here she ended up without the childhood memories, the birthday candles, the prom dates, but the scars would heal to prove it. She had arrived.



Last fall, when other girls occupied time in shopping malls and late night diners and uncomfortable back seat fumbling of flesh and minds, she went searching. The narrow creek at the bottom of a slowly sloping, leaf covered slippery bank, was where the search began and where the search would end.



It was too early for snow or ice or the extra layers of clothing, but the leaves didn’t know this and they had already decided to depart. So they did, and as the girl descended to the winding path of water below, she watched hundreds of fiery foliage nose-dive their way to drowning. She wanted to say goodbye to each leaf as it parted from it’s home, took the journey through the air, and hit it’s final resting place in the creek, but she knew this was a hopeless, romantic notion and she dismissed it as fast as she thought it and like so many things in her past, it was forgotten before the bank leveled off and she reached the water’s edge.



Stooping to test the water with a pinky touch, the girl was surprised to break through a thin veil of sheet ice covering the surface. She withdrew the finger and promptly sucked away the freezing droplets, holding her finger in her mouth to warm it, she stepped off down the creek bed.



It was the silence here that kept her on edge and alert and that was one of the reasons she knew she was in the right place. Nowhere and at no time in her life, had she stopped to appreciate such calmness and she wasn’t about to start. As the water played along the stony ground, her hand reached out, a flat surface, a leafs savior for it to lie. The girl took in the cracked edges, the burnt orange and molten reds, the tiny almost transparent veins still mapping their way across the leaf’s lifeless body. She said her silent goodbye before crushing it between her clenched fist. It crumbled easily and she dismissed the golden pieces like ash to the ground.







The blood kept on coming, drop after drop, off the tip of her nose, off the edge of her chin, each landing with a gentle splash to decorate the snow where she sat. She was cold, she knew she was colder than she should be, yet she wasn’t sure she should move. The last drop had fallen to take the shape of an angel in the snow and at this she scrubbed with the heal of her palm until all that was left was a smudged patch of pink.



She couldn’t pick the time, the fading winter light didn’t hold any clues, but she knew why she was here.