Food

I walked in the streets like a bag lady--those streets where the snow melts like years of dirt from an old pipe. Why had I come to this neck of the woods. Was it to meet the shamans who've gathered in the forests to invoke their war gods and call forth the thunder that would clear the rumbling darkness?

I don't know. All I know is the message the pigeon brought to the roost weeks ago. Weeks spent traveling by train, auto, and walking.

I see the two young people on the street who seem familiar. There's something there that I have missed seeing in the eyes of the young ones where I live now. Often they are eyes filled with emptiness or terror--the empty terror that comes from seeing families die without food or sisters and mothers raped by bayonets and gangs of laughing hyenas.

These young people here--I wonder whether they know what the darkness brings, those gods that thirst for the blood of my young sisters and brothers in the deserts?

Do they see me, or only an old lady they think has lost her teeth and her mind; a dark crone come to haunt the forests of the midnight sun?

I must find food at least. There's supposed to be a soup kitchen nearby...