They Feed

An airport terminal.
A chair in a waiting place
late at night, between the rush of moving feet,
the coming and the going
of anxieties.
She leans, the little girl
with one foot on the floor,
the other under bent knee, twitching,
her face pressing
unseen against the lower leg
of an outstretched, snoring man.
Slightly, he moans, shifting a bit.
She lifts her head, hair long and black,
unsettling as she rises,
swiftly rises from her place
and moves with quickened feet
to the ladies' room across the way,
leaving behind where she had lain
a tiny pool of urine.
She is frail,
squints at the light,
dress black shoes silent across the tiled floor.
She enters a stall,
the sounds of her relief,
like water from a steady stream.
She stands by the sink and stares,
her eyes like a doll's, her face wiped clean.
She does not look
at the man in the chair. She knows
he'll sleep and miss his flight,
sleep until roused by someone wondering
why he's been there for days.
He will not remember her.
She walks with quickened feet
against the shadows by the wall and stops,
watching the lone mother
who is sound asleep, her baby
in a basket near.
The girl approaches, silently,
concealed by travel bag she crouches
by the mother's leg,
an ankle bared,
the pen-knife raised,
a single cut.
She places lips to flesh, closes her eyes.

You see them sometimes on the street,
sometimes in a mall, on darkened beach,
at bus stops, subways, there
among the homeless, there
they gather, one by one, the waifs,
the well-dressed children of the street
who play with your kids late at night,
though you don't know where they live.
They shiver, heatless, like wintered shrike
so much older than they seem.
There is no death in what they take,
no crosses worn dissuade,
no days in coffins,
no wooden stakes.
They are an ancient race,
like wingless bats they suckle,
loving and unloved their need.
Our lifeblood, theirs,
it flows unnoticed and unseen.
They gather when we sleep and when we dream.
They live, they take, they feed.
They feed.

Mark Arvid White lives and writes in Alaska, and has had his poetry and stories appear in such publications as New Myths, Permafrost, Wild Violet, Modern Haiku, Candelabrum, and many others online or in print.

Find more by Mark Arvid White in the Author Index.