| Iscariot for Charlotte Rolling solo through the valley I am reminded of news I heard concerning you. I had been in the city for Thanksgiving, visiting the program where we�d met when I worked there and you were a resident. You were not my favorite�you didn�t respond much to my attempts to make a connection with you�but I liked you and always felt that there was an aura of sadness around you. I noticed the defeated look on your face and the way you approached almost everything with the attitude that it is all pointless. You told me of the lone family member you had�a younger brother, who was in a different program, and you once brought back a drawing that he did for you when you visited him. That was one of the few days that I saw you smile. And then one day after lunch you used me to help you and another girl run off from the house. I felt guilty; that I should have been more aware of such things. More than that, however, I was disconsolate that I did not have the chance to say a goodbye of some sort and to let |
| you know that I care. Of course, those words would have been more for me than you, offering little hope to counter your almost unbearable hopelessness. I never saw you again or heard anything of what had happened to you, until I was told that you had it�the virus. How much sorrow can be packed into one person�s life? I wondered. I felt horrible, then, about celebrating a day of thanks. These thoughts returned to me as I drove on a quiet road past fields that were empty but had blankets of soft white fog wafting above, as if about to drift down and embrace the ground below. Meanwhile, you are out there on the cold and uncaring streets of the city, or perhaps you are in another program, passing days and months being unhappy �til you grow ill, and the physical pain overwhelms all the other forms of hurt you have been dealt in your fifteen years. I wish that I could see you once more, but again it would only be to ease my conscience. Every molecule of compassion I can muster is useless when the earth has conspired against you. |
| (December 2002) |