Upon the Lonesome Wild
The house is too quiet at night these days. Instead of the sounds of my children breathing, snoring, stirring restlessly in their beds I hear things moving through the fields outside. Slow sinuous things stirring the leaves on the tall stalks, larger rushing things that shake the ears of corn and great tromping things that snap the stalks themselves.
I stop telling my husband what I hear in the night. He still insists the only living things on this planet are what we brought with us. Rats tagged along, they always do, he said, but what I'm hearing is not rats.
And the soft whispering movements that I have to strain to hear are more frightening than the stomping destruction. They get closer to our little house, every night a little closer.
Most mornings I wake far
