Angel Girl

Small, young girl, you shuffle slowly through the woods next to me, quiet and unsmiling, heart deeply saddened by your slight years, eyes blank but pleading, and silent your fears.

You tell me how angry they make you, all the people in your scarce existance, and i hear louder how much they crush you, hurt you. The snow shimmers dancingly in the golden sun in our forested world but you, my fighting fragile girl, have long since lost your own sparkle. I smile from time to time, laugh and exclaim even, despite knowing my efforts are past being contagious. You tell me your dark dreams, dark thoughts, dark life. I want nothing in this world right now except to make you smile, make you shine a little, make your hidden soul move. You don't even feel like a person. You barely feel anything anymore, you no longer want anyone, you want to be no one and nowhere. You tell me how you think the nurses in the hospital mixed you up with another baby when you were born.

You are tough. Tougher than you ever were meant to be, and ever had to be. You tell me that you don't cry. That even in those raw times when you want to more than anything, when you almost did yesturday night, how you won't let yourself. You have become a master. You don't cry. You don't even worry that you may.

Yesturday night was one of the best I've had. It was probably one of yours as well. We walked and walked and walked over the crunching snow on the frozen Winnipeg river, aimed towards a distant skyline marked distinctly by twighlight, then by dawn, silhouetted by a wooden bridge on one side, a tall silver tower on the other. Even the very air we breathed was shadowed by the night. You were different I think, you seemed free, young, OK again. We talked about the beautiful wilderness, the warm melting winter, the way that we both just wanted to live in the woods for a year with no city distractions. We looked for stars, and planets, and the Northern Lights, and ended up finding red satelites and twinkling blue planes and friendship. You told me about the Native Spirits, and the animals and the land.

For that brief moment on our stargazing walk, life was ok. Life was manageable. Not just for you, but for me too. Becoming friends let us both experience a new freshness. A new perspective on life.

Angel girl, take those minutes of freedom back into your hand, swallow them, let them nourish you with the reasons for living, let them dispell the depressive weight you carry with you day after day after day after day.