Alone in This Place
“They’ll kill you, and I’ll be here in the woods all alone and abandoned.” ~Grimm (TV Series) NBC; Season Two, Episode 19, “Endangered.”
I can’t relate to the concept of bomb shelters,
hiding underground with a year’s supply of food,
ten-gallon jugs of water, antibiotics, a mattress
on the concrete floor.
My biggest fear is surviving.
Alone. In this Place.
When my mother was a child,
a cyclone tore through her Midwest town.
The neighbors shouted out, summoned her
to their cellar to ride out the storm.
When the beast stopped howling,
she crawled out from the cellar,
searched the street for signs of life.
No mommy to hold her hand,
no daddy to lift her up above the rubble.
Only a room—house no longer attached,
and a door—still closed.
She opened this door to her bedroom
to find the sole survivor of the storm—
her doll, still sitting pretty upon a pink
and white checkerboard quilt.
My biggest fear is surviving.
Alone. In this place.
