Alone by Myself With No One Else

She stood with her face pressed against the glass of the window in the small blue room. The small blue room was the only room in the world to Anna. She looked out the window like she was watching a war outside or a distant storm closing in. Life was a mystery, she thought. Her granddaughter, Maria, had brought her friends here once, handsome boys and girls with youth in their eyes. Now, they were going to die, one by one, by the waterfall beyond the village.

When the angels told her in the midnight hour, sharp and insistent. She knelt by the bed, her knees aching against the wooden floor, she whispered to the empty air. “Father protect the children.”

Maria's friends—boys with braces, girls with flowers—fell in the mud, their voices fading like angel sighs. She closed her eyes and prayed. “God, I pray they stop falling. Can you help me?”

They look like children, she thought of her child, how she would whisper softly the ways to keep her safe. There is no one in control.

“Lay still,” she says as she holds her pale face. Anna knelt again, feeling the power. She felt the energy coursing through her. She felt like she was flying. She imagined the angel choir singing. But it was a dream, and dreams end. She awoke alone, watching the last of them go out the door. One by one. They scurried off to death. The Cold cruel touch of death that was waiting. Life is a mystery.

She heard them call her name. When there was no way to feel home. When she returned to her room, they were there with her, smashed and broken. Not alive. Not dead. Just with her now.

She sat by the window once more, the war still raging. Everyone must walk alone. In the beginning and in the end we are alone.