"You must be wrong," Elke insists. "I
have felt it and even if it now burns low,
it's burned high before. You must be wrong."

The desert night is cool and dry and Elke
can feel the incontestable heat radiating from her
strong limbs and her golden face and gleans
a brief power, but the coyotes snap at her ankles,
fractious and fixed, and Elke runs.

Her enclave is large, but the coyotes keep the
gate, and though she is full of might and leaping
strides, they stride with her and surround her and
hold her fast in the throng.

She is cattle and one day she will be a pile
of bones in the desert with a heart of flies,
and she cries deep in her throat, a suffocated
roar of frustration and mourning.

11/26/2013

Posted on 11/26/2013
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