Across the killing fields she waits, clutching your promise with soiled fingertips. Time has missed her; still the girl with ribbons holding up the curls that are now caked with mud and bits of grass. Still the girl with paint-chipped fingernails that grazed your hand with hers when you had no intention. Still the girl who drew your name in hearts out of chalk on the sidewalks close to where she had lived.

You pressed the edge of your serrated blade to her life and cut around her limbs. Rolled her up between your fingertips and creased an edge on the unmarked paper with your broken and bleeding lips. What a pretty notion, she was. How you spoke to her of better things. Her heart held songs unsung that you tore at until the sinews snapped and the flesh wailed. You never found the better things that you spoke of. She became a used and dirtied doll; her porcelain skin was cracked and peeling, the gentle curls she once owned were now straw knots tied up with rags, green eyes turned harsh and abidingly bare.

Across the killing fields she waits, still holding fast by the riverside to the promises you made in her youth. She loved you still in leaving, she'll love you still in death.