I rub my eyes and struggle to free myself from those moments between sleep and awake.
I hear it again, but I know this time that I am truly awake.
It is the sound of a cow right outside my window.
I don’t own a cow, nor do I live anywhere near anyone else that does.
I don’t even live in the country where one might just happen by.
But there it is once more, a cow, it is definitely a cow.
I pull myself from beneath the warm blankets and walk to the window.
As I open the blinds, there it is. A cow. And it’s looking right at me.
It moos again as if it wants something from me.
There is no one else around as it is just barely dawn and I don’t know quite what to do.
I decide to get dressed and see if it is injured, or stuck, or something. I don’t know what.
And I hear it moo again. More urgently. Perhaps rushing me?
I reach to open my bedroom door, but I jerk my hand back instantly.
It is burning hot to the touch.
The cow begins mooing more insistently if that is possible.
I feel the door and it too is hot to the touch and that is when I see the wisps of smoke curling under the door.
My house is on fire!
The cow’s mooing is getting louder somehow.
I stumble to the window where the cow is waiting, and I struggle to get it open.
It has been painted shut in some past redecorating project of mine – I panic.
The cow moves to the window.
I watch dumbfounded as the cow puts its head down and runs straight into my sealed window.
Glass shatters around me.
I shake off my disbelief and make my way out the window.
Sirens in the distance are getting closer.
The firefighters ask me if anyone else is in the house as they check me for injuries.
I tell them no, but I want them to make sure the cow is ok.
Later, at the hospital, I was told that no one ever found a cow.
– Diana Kristine
She stood on the green grass at
the edge of the world,
one step backwards from the icy
precipice.