Roads

There is a road in New Brunswick, although I can't remember where it is, only what it looked and felt like. Dense forest surround either side of this road, with a small river creating a break in the trees. A bridge sits atop the river, small and old. The air tastes of heartbreak and loneliness there and the trees whisper quietly of almost forgotten sorrows. Almost. 

This road has a name that I can't remember. But I remember its story. I can feel its pain.

Many years ago on a cold, merciless night, a girl around my own age of 17 travels down a desolate road. Winter has taken her toll on the earth, leaving the trees bare and the road empty, not even the birds in the trees can find the effort to sing. With her, this girl carries a small bundle of warmth. A little girl, to small to even crawl. A newborn babe with rosy cheeks and a little dress. She is innocence herself, only knowing her life for a few weeks at best. 

On that night, on that road, with only the cold and the cries of the forest to comfort her, the baby is left. With nothing but her thin dress and little boots, the baby sits. There isn't a single soul for miles, and her cries fall only on the ears in the trees. She is left to the elements by her own mother, and I wonder now if it was starvation or cold that claimed her life in the end. Deep in my heart something tells me it was neither, that this poor little creature died of loneliness, a broken heart. A brutal fate for one so small, to be left in the cold without so much as a hand to hold. 

The forest echos now with the memory of her cries and the trees have scars that bleed her pain. She had nothing and no one. There, in the cold, sat this small babe. For hours she must've cried, or possibly just minutes, and I'm not sure what breaks my heart more.

Her little body was buried beneath the snow quickly, freezing her body and her soul. Trapping her in a tomb of brutal cold and emptiness. When spring finally came and the snow melted away all that she was washed away with it, leaving behind a quickly rotting corpse of a child that once was. Eventually someone stumbled upon her heart breaking remains and the road was given a new name, her name.