A girl runs through the hills,
Her toes weaving with the blades of grass
Creating braids of green and white.

Soft, soft cries
Of the moon and the clouds
Whisperwhisper moan.
They are the heartbreak of the river
Parting with its soft-bottomed basement,
Where large things become small, and the fish can dance alone in the dark.

The girl’s loose-knit clothing falls off her body, because after all,
She is not a girl, but a fragment of time,
And her innocence is concealed
Deep within the bloody chambers of her heart
In a small, marble box
Whose key was lost long ago.

When the girl stumbles, her knees
Paint the green, grassy hills into Christmastime.
Her hands fold around her spraying wounds, and

Her moans join the wind’s and the river’s.
They are the celestial music you hear in the middle of the night
When you cannot sleep and you think you are going crazy.
Her eyes are the squeaky violin and
Her toes are the throbbing piano.

No one hears it, the girl and the wind and the river’s music.
She is only a scritchy-scratchy memory
In the minds of people more concerned with magic.

When they remember, she will be gone,
Wrapped up in the clouds,
Squeezed by the scrawny branches of newborn trees.

They will see the clothing and the red
And they will ask,
Who was this girl?

She will respond,
I am the wind,
Or maybe she will say she is the grass.
But they will only hear
The sound of the wind galloping through the trees.

Later, they will find her body asleep in the grass.
They will carry her into rooms with walls lined with linoleum.
They will measure her and fill her with fake-blood
And after long hours spent with sharp metallic tools,
They will decide
That she is dead.