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Posy

      Waking up was harder to do when you knew that you were alone. That your life was singular, remembering you had nobody.

     Unfortunately, that was my everyday.

     It hadn't always been that way, in fact, it was pretty recent that it started. Or ended I should say, my Mother's life that is.

   One day she was starkly gone, leaving a wake of sorrow and emptiness.

     Empty house. Empty mind. Empty me, as I felt hollow now.

     She hadn't really been much company. She spent all of her time alone, locked in her room. She would sleep for hours at a time, only coming out to eat, drink, use the toilet and take showers.

     Sometime she would talk to me, but she was just different than when my dad was still around.

     Eventually her miserey ended one day, she hadn't come out of her room. I went in and found a sight that would haunt me forever.

     Not because it was gruesome, she died in her sleep, but because that was the moment I realized I was alone, and that I would probably be alone for the rest of my purposeless life.

     That was months ago. Still, I somehow pressed on.

I would get up right when the sun would rise, and head to the woods to check my traps, collect anything if there was anything to collect.

A rabbit, maybe a squirrel. I would sometimes scavenge for edible berries if I was running low.

      Today was no different. I headed out, doing what I needed to do and coming back home.

     I use to make good time, when mom was alive, but now I didn't really care about what happens to me. When I had to take care of her, I would hurry home as quickly as possible, out of fear.

     Fear that I would run into another person. I use to be terrified of that happening.

People out there were evil, that's what my parents told me. There weren't many men left, but that didn't mean that women aren't dangerous.

We girls can be just as cunning, just as merciless. That's what it took to survive sometimes.

     Of course, I didn't want to believe it, in all the books I'd read people seemed nice for the most part, wonderful even, but my mother was always quick to remind me that they were written before.

     I didn't remember a lot from before the world fell apart, but I did vaguely recall my parents being... happy.

     So, without any care of what I came across, I would spend hours in the Tennessee woods that I called home.

We didn't actually have 'states' anymore, seeing as how America, and every other country, didn't exist anymore.

But, about 11 years ago, this would be called Tennessee.

     I finally got back home mid day, I looked up at my house and smiled. It was settled in the middle of nowhere, and it was well over 250 years old.