Under the Kiss of a Blood Soaked Tree

A little girl sits
in a tree of severed arms
dripping dark blood
on her pretty white dress
making strange polka dot patterns
not quit right

She swings her legs in a careless fashion
she smiles,
too young to know the word
"terrified"
The sinners are silent

Carrion eaters attack the limbs
that hold her world together
the lies that adults wove
pecked apart

She's mesmerized by the way
her dress floats up and down
with the beating of their
large, dirty gray feathers

Tiny hands, now bloodied, reach
for the vulture's head
that comes between her legs

It squawks in revulsion
hops down
She is still of the living
no good for eating...yet

nothing stays alive or
innocent for long
even now the tree decays
feeding darkness'
hovering wings

Her dress,
drying to brown
purity disappears
from the surface

but hope's gentle kiss
blows the dust away
there's still
the whites of
her eyes.