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Maria's Journal entry #87
Volume 4

                                           BEREFT

see now what god-like task is set before her:
to crawl, to walk, to wake from dreaming.
she answers these demands silently, sweetly—
and from the heights, she falls these stories

counts carefully the days, the years, the hours
‘til she becomes the same as those who bore her,
who tramped the way required of mortals
when she so gravely stumbles forward.

an end was near, an end so surely coming
that hours held their breath, anticipating
what lies below, bereft, within these playthings
who live, love, die while hell and heaven struggle

to gain the upper hand in hidden matters
of consequence to man only in slumber.
but she questions again the violence done her
in solitude, at last, the darkness answers

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