Madison is in her late 20’s, standing in front of a small fenced in cemetery on the property of her family farm in North Carolina. 

Madison:

The little black girl with the nappy hair and dingy dress seduced me again.  Today she stood at the back door and beckoned me from the other side of the screen door to follow her.  And so I did.  As I chased her through the grassy meadows sprawled between the farmhouse I inherited from my grandmother and the woods, I wondered why she has chosen to haunt me.  She wants to pull me into something, but what?

She wants me to see her, to follow her, to know her perhaps but she never allows me to touch her.  We never get that close.  When my advancement becomes too dangerous for her she sprints off with the energy of a thousand gusts of wind, vanishing before my muscles even receive the messages from my brain to move.  Today her naked feet move steadily and swiftly even though she habitually looks back to verify that I am still following at a safe distance.  During this exercise it occurs to me that this beautiful little girl was borne into a paranoia I have never known.  So I fight my curiosity and keep my distance. 

     When we arrived at the edge of the woods, where grass recedes like an aging mans hairline, I realized where she is taking me and I prepared to follow her. Through the woods we dashed together, and yet apart, making our way to the other side where a grassy knoll covered in headstones awaited us.  As we neared the end of the patch of woods I lost sight of the little girl.  Confident I knew where she is leading me, I continued to charge ahead.  As the trees dispersed I looked up only to be blinded by the bright light of the noon day sun.  In my blindness I tripped over a rotting log and sliced my knee open on my way down, meeting the earth with a great thud which echoed in the stillness of the woods.  As I writhed in pain, clutching my knee to my chest, a calm came over me and the little girl returned.  This time she came up to my side.  She seemed terrified by my blood.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  She’s so close, the closest she’s ever been.  I know I could reach out in a flash and have a hold on her.  But that would be a violation.  And she’s so quick there is no guarantee that I would actually catch her.  Standing over me, waiting patiently for my strength to return to my legs she appeared as an angel, with a brilliant halo highlighting her undone hair.  I closed my eyes again and when I reopened them she was gone.  And so was the pain.

     So I stood and stumbled toward my destination: the family cemetery.  It doesn’t look anything like I remember it.  Weeds and grass have grown wild and high.  The little fence that surrounds the dozen or so graves has fallen in on itself.  But the headstones are still visible.  And there among them, a site marked only by a simple cross.  Then a whisper passes through me with the sigh of the wind… name me.  And I know why she’s led me here.