400th Post

The night moved slowly like an old man trying to get down a flight of stairs
Like it knew that it's time was up but it was incapable of moving any faster till dawn
Emmy was sick again
Emmy was always sick
Up till the day she died it seemed like
Poor girl
She was only 9 when she finally went
I remember when she was born
The sickly little thing
2 weeks premature
It was a miracle she survived
For as long as she did
Poor girl
Most of my memories of her are of me holding her in my arms
Rocking her as she screamed from the pain of colic
Or sitting in a rocking chair
Holding her while she slept
Fitfully, her dreams affected by fever
My poor yellow haired Emmy
I got her to sleep that night
She was eight
She had the flu
In a year she'd get Pneumonia
And that'd be it
I got her to sleep
Finally
I walked to the window
Past the dying embers in the fire place
And I looked out at the full moon
Glowing in the night sky
Surrounded by a hundred million stars
And I listened to the wind slap at the cabin
That I had built with my own hands
All for her
All so that she'd have a place
To grow up in
To live in when she got older
The wind's shrill whistle outside
The night's lonely song
I had protected her from the night
And the rain
And the cold
I had done everything I could
But I was still powerless
And I turned and looked back at her lying there
In her bed
The dying fire casting a soft orange glow on her face
I knew she wasn't going to last long in this world
I had always known it
Looking back at the moon
With the same skull face that had always mocked me since I was a child
I decided that after Emmy finally went
I was going to burn the cabin down