THREE HOURS PAST MIDNIGHT

The Woods Keep What They Want

She should have bled.

The ground says she did.

Branches broken.

Marks too high to reach.

Silence where something should have fed.

But the trail doesn’t end.

It circles.

She moves through it—

not whole,

not gone.

The woods return her

in pieces—

not where they fell,

but where they were placed.

Step by step,

she gathers what remains.

A voice comes back first.

Then the shape.

Then the memory of breath.

She thinks it was teeth.

Instinct.

Hunger.

But something in the trees

remembers her

too well.

She finds the last piece

waiting.

She takes it.

And when she turns to leave—

Taken.

Uncounted.

Within and without.

At most…

the woods keep what they want.