George T. Mormann

We hid in the sticks of a dying willow long stripped of her luster, gripping the ice left from an untimely winter carried across a pond we’d never seen. Here, we watched a white man shoot the last white buffalo we’d ever know. She limped towards the plain before the red, setting sun. Blades of tall grass caught her blood and tears, and the man trailed them wielding a long knife. When she fell, we sang for her and promised to carry her forever. From our wings we danced over her like crows. Not as a murder. As a tribe.