Sarah Flanigan - Poetry Simply Put

  She walked without a destination. Her only goal was to find another human being. The road led to nowhere. No houses or buildings enhanced the landscape. There was just the road flanked by weeds on either side.Her feet kicked up dust with every step. The sun glared and beat down on her back. Sweat ran down her midriff and between her thighs. She feared she was alone in the world. Heat lightning streaked across the day sky.She focused on walking because when she thought her head threatened to split in two. Forcing memory resulted in an empty dance in her head that syncopated with the electrical havoc in the sky. Who am I? Where am I? her mind screamed. She didn’t know. The moment she woke in the weeds, shielding the sun from her eyes with arms that ached from bruises, was her birth. She kept walking.Her stomach grumbled for food but she couldn’t abide the request. “Keep moving.” She traveled west as the sun led the way, but west to where?Her muscles ached against the incline of the road and begged her to stop. At the top of a hill she saw a town. She blinked twice to prove to herself that she was not delirious. There was more to the world than the road. “Please, let there be others,” she prayed. Another flash snaked across the horizon and her head throbbed. She started toward the town then stopped, afraid. How would they receive a strange woman, dirty and hungry pounding on their doors? A woman who didn’t know her name or where she came from? Her stomach growled again. “I have to try.” The quiet gave rise to dread. “Why don’t I hear children? Why don’t I hear anything?” Her heart twisted in her chest. It was all wrong but she couldn’t turn back. Behind her, lay only a road. Ahead of her there was promise. When she reached the first house her desperation escaped and she pounded on the door with anxious fists. “Help me! Please, open the door!” Only the quiet greeted her. Taunted her. She peered into the window and saw nothing. Empty, abandoned. She moved onto the next and the next and the next. Always the same; empty and lifeless. She shivered and felt more alone. Her hopes abandoned, like the houses, she resolved to find food. The door of an deserted shop opened without protest. She stepped inside the box of shadows. She jumped at a movement that invaded her peripheral vision. “Who’s there?” she whispered hoarsely. She waited and breathed and listened. A hum lived in the room but she couldn’t find its source. She shook her head,dismissing the sound as a hallucination. Nature’s strobe, struck again and threw a glare into the room and she flinched. “Afraid of my own shadow,” she laughed. The familiar phrase disturbed her. She’d heard it before. When? Who said it? Memory hid beyond her grasp. But she was certain there’d been someone. Before. Before what? Another burst blinded her but it came from inside the room, as if it had followed her and waited until she was vulnerable. It threw her against the wall. Fire surged through her brain. Her body convulsed. She screamed but the sound fell into the void. It swallowed and entrapped her in darkness and ice. The world melted and left her hovering in nothing.

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