The Wait

There is a room, laden with dust.  Motes, specks falling through a yellowish hued light.  Drifting about in meandering paths, not really going anywhere in this stagnant environment.  The air is old, the feeling of a mausoleum, abandoned except for the occasional new addition or regretful mourner or morbid passerby.  And within these flecks of dusty yellow, half shadowed, half lighted is a child dressed in a thin linen shift.  Knobby arms wrapped about knees pulled up to meet the chin, she sits completely immobile watching the dancing flecks, waiting.  Waiting until her joints have frozen.  That if she had moved, if only a centimeter, they would creak with protest, hardened muscles forgetting how to stretch and relax.  The atmosphere darkens as time passes by.  When at first half of her was lighted and warmed by the sunlight streaming through the rectangular long window high towards the ceiling, time's passing drew away the rays of light, diminishing the warmth upon her body.  As in correspondence to the watery hope leaking out of her shaking hands.  She sits there waiting, in darkness, in a shadow within a shadow.  Except now, there is nothing to watch, nothing to ward off the cold seeping in freezing the creaky stiffness into solidity.  Turning a child into a doll, waiting forevermore for someone to find her.