Buried Me
…She looked around, searching for something to recognize her: a building, a passerby, a tree, or maybe an errant smell.
She’d been here before…
She knew it…
…long ago.
Her memory had stayed here, amongst the scattered, fallen leaves…
…inside the fertile bulbs of early spring crocuses that still were a long time away from bursting through the crust of a hard frost.
She was still here…
…perhaps in the nuts gathered by squirrels…
…her memories hoarded away in the hollow trunk of an Elm - or a majestic Oak even -
being saved and rationed to enable survival of another long, cold, dark Winter.
…she considered asking a stranger for assistance but the sweaty stout man behind the bakery counter inside the otherwise barren Dunken Doughnuts did not engender a feeling of safety…
…several apparent homeless street residents let her scurry past in the brisk black of this December night –
--oblivious to the Salvation Santa ringing his incessant bell –
- while competing for the generosity of strangers for change.
If she doesn’t get found now
her memories are stuck forever.