The epidemic was the most horrid thing. We were suffering, every day you heard the wails of families like sirens. The cries for lost ones rang out along the dim city roads. We have had war, bloodshed. But Pa came home from war. There had been women’s rights supporters attacks, but Ma came home only bruised and shaken. Pa and Ma and Lizzie are never coming back. I am left, the young one, the strong one, the survivor. What can I do? I cannot find love in this ruthless world, where even the animals had gotten sick. Food is scarce; a piece of bread with a sip of water is a treat all of us savor as a community. The weak support the strong. Strong supports weak. Young supports old. Old supports young.

 We cannot keep on going like this, it is cruel and scary. The clouds seem to laugh at our misery and loss and they never seem to part. Cobblestone streets are wet with our tears and the world seems to cry with us. Large families are now one. One city is now a family. The nights are silent and the days solemn. The sick and ailing go to a building with nurses in gray suits, why be white if no one’s fate there is bright? Our skin has faded to the color of sadness and bright eyes now swim in grim solitude. Dresses are plain, gray, and simple, like our life. You catch the disease, you die. If you do not die, you struggle against life. It is an unfair, grim game of luck. But I know, in the end, everyone gets the same, sad thing. I will never see my ma or pa or sister again. They were lost to the epidemic of misfortune, the one that courses through their veins and then dominates their body in malignant rivers. It is always cold, stormy; skies cry for us, with us, they are us. We have forgotten what blue lakes; sunshine on our cheeks feels like. The song we sing is mournful as a mourning doves cry, and she is with us always, always. 

 My breath is cold like piercing ice, my hands get numb at night. Crystalline family days echo teasingly in my mind, forever fading moonlight. The ghosts of them whisper inside my soul, word I cannot hear. It is more than horrid. It is  wretched, terrifying, please try to dream of the better days when we had cookies and cinnamon sugar and sun. You must remember the days before.The warmer days full of firewood and warm milk. The happier days with clear skies and bright eyes. Please, please remember how life was, before the scissors of fate cut my family away from my tapestry.