SETTING

a hill. a tree. soft green, linen and lace, apples and pearls and a rabbit hole.

it's an alice-in-wonderland hill. the sky is overcast and somehow over-bright. the tree is green and laughing and it is the middle of winter.

wind flicks across the hill, plays, taunts. laughs like the tree but brighter, lighter, angry or sad or bitter or...

a hill. a tree. abandoned railroad tracks. there's a cemetary over the hill. (you don't know how you know that.)

a girl is sitting where there should be none.

SCENE

she is fair and cool and bright like summer sun on a spring day. she is blue and peach and golden and bright bright pristine white. she is fragile and framed beneath the (willow, willow, why so sad?) tree, a perfect ancient photograph in her dress and shoes and self.

she rises and greets you, no, she does not. she smiles and looks up as you approach but nothing, nothing has moved her. she is rooted to the ground, her pristine (unclean) white stockings have grown tendrils into the earth beneath her, she has been here for centuries.

at least one. there's no other way she could be.

she watches and you are silent and then she speaks and it is like a brook or like a bird or like a song it is like an ocean. a tempest. like the end.

i am, she says, i am you and me and everything in between, you know. you know me, don't you? you love me, don't you? do you see? upside-down and all around and mad, mad mad.

you think i'm alice, she says, but i'm not. i am only real things. i am sweet and innocent and lost and mad. i have met the queen and rabbit and playing-card men, but i am only me and you and everything.

she speaks in tongues you do not know but every word is etched onto you. you understand but you don't, you can't understand.

(she thinks tongues is a funny word.)

(you don't know how you know that.)

END

there's a tree, and a hill, and beyond is a very old cemetary where the headstones are weatherworn and cracked and crooked and dry fall leave cover the graves, just beginning to crumble into winter dust. it's beautiful and hateful and alive and singing.

you've never been here before.

you could walk to the top of the hill. it's not far.

instead you sit down with the pale soft girl. she has cold tea and colder bread. the ground is damp and uncomfortable but you will not ask to share her blanket.

she laughs in delight and you don't know what to say.

a tree.

a hill.

a cemetary.

you don't know how you know that.