• an urchin girl
• stalks a desolated city street
• knife in hand
• gift from an old teacher and friend

//

• stealing and fighting and scraping by
• she wonders
• why she was born to survive
• when so many weren’t

//

• what makes her willing
• to fight for her life
• why will she never truly despair
• and give up

//

• what about her brain
• gives her drive to cling to life
• so goddamn tightly

//

• she wishes
• she could be strong enough
• for all the little ones
• the fallen ones
• that get chewed up by this cruel world
• she wishes
• she could have saved them.

//

• why
• when she hits rock bottom
• lost and alone and without help
• doesn’t she just give up?
• why is there still
• some ancient primitive urge to survive?
• is it because she’s strong?
• or because she has to be?
• why does she always refuse to die
• why does the world sit on her shoulders
• and why is she strong enough to carry it
• hair greying from the stress
• even if just for a second

//

• what makes her different
• from the hundreds of thousands
• that lost their battles

//

• saying she’s stronger
• feels like a disgraceful snipe
• at their memory.

//

• why can she handle the weight
• when so many of her comrades
• and sisters and brothers and siblings
• and fellow ronin, lost in the wreckage of a dying world

//

• could not.

//

• maybe it isn’t that she’s stronger.
• maybe she’s just lucky.
• that it was light enough
• when it needed to be.

//

• maybe there isn’t an answer.

//

• maybe, maybe, that’s
• the absurd eldritch horror
• of this cruel, dark world.

//

• she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both.