5.
In the dozing of her depression Elke comes to terms
with the dousing of the fire in heart. Especially now,
she knows that the embers have burned low and gone out,
and left charcoal and ash in the once billowing chambers.
Its beats are slow and frayed.

She gets up and laboriously moves herself, climbing step
by step to the highest peak in her territory, and stares
at the sprawling city landscape below. It is a glaring
day, and the glass reflects bright white, and the asphalt
shimmers.

Her captors follow at a distance, bright eyes under the
sparse shade. She sets herself down with determined weight
and gathers about her the fallen brush and the dead branches
from her parched and swollen world into a cairn of refuse, and
with the bottom of a glass bottle for a lense, she sets her
cairn on fire.

The coyotes begin a swift yet trepidatious approach but it is
too late. Elke has lifted a burning branch to her mouth, and
swallowed it whole.

11/26/2013

Posted on 11/26/2013
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