Sunrise Girl

Somewhere down the road,

a dog barked.

It warned the brightening sky

that it had not yet been fed, that it had woken up hungry and its owners wouldn’t come out for a while longer.

It was a Saturday morning.

Quiet, peaceful--

Not unlike sleep.

The world had exhausted itself and passed out in the night, only to wake to the insistent coming of syrupy dawn.

Orange stained fingers reached through the darkness

and prodded around for something

they could not find. Pink

followed at a steadier pace, not as desperate for what it had lost.

Yellow came last, and

as Mara watched it glitter at the dangling edge of the world,

she reminded herself not to pull the trigger.

The gun dropped to the sagging porch with a firework clatter.

She cried for all of the bone-weary world to hear

as sunrise broke across a seething horizon. Warmth spread

from her damp toes, up her legs, and into the pit of her empty

carcass. It felt

like human touch

human warmth

human love.

Something she missed

and so disastrously craved.