Emily Kruse

the night before, while the girls were carelessly dreaming of cherry pies & tire swings & boys smiling, all alone the moon grew fat on clouds. no one noticed the stars huddling

in a small, confused cluster & then - poof! - gone. all morning the sun was pinkish & serene, & the birds remembered how to sing, so the girls did, too, & forgot for once the boys got out of school, again. all the way up to geometry, sun was a welcome face & the girls were all philosophers, flying far, far outside their heads, way off above the schoolhouse. birds first saw it coming, & hushed a moment so the wind's high melody seemed to come out of nowhere. high noon to moon rise the heavens raged and ice-dust fine as flour blinded the air, driven by a wind so furious the girls could not hear even their own voices. they knew if they panicked, the teacher would, too. boys at home, and the girls were going to have to forget about being girls, and be strong as trees. the wind was a furious beast, licking up their skirts and wrapping icy fingers around their thin throats. they were so very sure they were dying. hope is something we got now,

after they somehow didn't die, not through fortitude or courage or blind faith - one hundred percent pure miracle, our teachers instruct us in the thin light before dawn, like our mothers' mothers' mothers are some kind of a fairytale, their survival

pure conjecture.