Written by Megan Hanlon
DANCE STUDENT CAUGHT IN A MISSILE STRIKE | Artwork by Doren Robbins
Little girl me’s hair is on fire.
Her fine strawberry tresses burn from scalp to virgin ends, glowing red and orange, dancing in the air. Her small white hands wave above her flaming head, trying to get anyone’s attention.
She runs from the shack where she sleeps alone to the nearest fine house, pounds ineffectual fists on the hard front door. “I know what happens!” she yells while bouncing from foot to bare foot on the rough concrete stoop.
Despite her frantic calls, no one answers.
Little girl me runs down the street, small balls of flame flapping in the wind behind her. “I know what happens!” she shrieks at nobody, thread-thin arms pumping as she turns the corner and heads toward the highway.
On the side of the road she tries to warn the cars that zoom past. She jumps up and down, hands making silent arcs like swooping red flags, hair-flames slapping against her back. Pieces of hand-me-down shirt break off and turn to unnoticed ash on the ground.
No one stops—no one even slows down—steadfastly staring at their own road ahead and ignoring her admonitions. After all, they’re not on fire yet.
Her arms fall useless at her sides, hands like rocks. “I know what happens!” she screams to the sky, but her voice is so small among the many engines.
Little girl me turns on her heel again, keeps running south along the interstate. Past the golden corn fields, past the decades-old “HELL IS REAL” billboard, past the noble university. She runs all the way to the statehouse, up the vast river of stairs, and through the echoing canyon of rotunda.
There she pushes through the throng of suited adults standing idly, her fiery hair brushing against many cold shoulders. Finally she finds the person who looks most important, and tugs hard on his blue-black sleeve.
“I know what happens!” she yells up at him, tears threatening to fall from her young, tired eyes.
“I know what happens when the people in charge don’t take care of you!”
.
Megan Hanlon is teaching sentences how to fly. Her words have appeared in The Forge Literary Magazine, Gordon Square Review, Reckon Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Variant Literature, Cowboy Jamboree, and more. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is equal parts tragedy and comedy. She is currently querying a memoir-in-flash about the meaning of home.