Alone

Maddie disliked poetry in school, but she now enjoys the library’s poetry books because they show her people’s interior thoughts. She thinks maybe one day she could write poems about her own experience and share them with a community. She enjoys Emily Dickinson’s poetry, especially the metaphor of hope as a bird that lives inside a person. However, this metaphor also worries Maddie. If hope is a bird, it could fly away.

Maddie finds a poetry book by Mary Oliver ("Wild Geese," "When Death Comes," "Messenger"), whose face is on the cover. Maddie enjoys a poem about how it’s important to observe nature and enjoy life because it’s ultimately short. Maddie wonders if her own family might be dead.

Maddie now assumes her parents are dead and can’t shake the idea. She can’t imagine, if they’re alive, why they haven’t returned yet. She assumes they’re never coming for her.

Now that Maddie “knows” her parents are dead, daily life continues like normal, except she doesn’t worry about staying gone too long since she no longer expects that rescuers might arrive. She’s sad, but she feels her hope of rescue is now gone. All that’s left is the present.

Maddie marvels at the beauty of nature and life even though she’s lonely.

Mary Oliver’s poetry inspires Maddie to seize the day and make the best of things, even if she never sees another person for the rest of her life.

Despite blizzards, Maddie enjoys fires with George and the beauty of snow.

The snow melts, and flowers sprout once more, which brings Maddie hope and rejuvenation as it has in past years.

Thanks to Mary Oliver, Maddie now views her life as precious. Thanks to Emily Dickinson, she still associates hope with birds. Seeing birds fly overhead, despite her circumstances, she can’t help but feel that Mother Nature is encouraging optimism.

Maddie is delighted to finally find good plums, apples, apricots, and peaches growing on local trees.

Maddie is picking apples near her mother’s old house that burned down. She hears a rumbling sound and then sees a helicopter up above.

Maddie hides. She’s not sure whether the helicopter belongs to the United States military, attackers, or someone else. There only seems to be one helicopter around. She follows it discreetly until it lands in a nearby baseball field.

Maddie stays hidden as she moves toward the helicopter. She hears voices but can’t tell what they’re saying. She sees figures and follows them at a distance.

Maddie doesn’t want to miss her chance of being rescued, but she also thinks it would be a shame if she survived everything up until now just to walk into a death trap.

Maddie continues following the figures at a distance. They pause near her mother’s old house, talking. One “man” walks to where the house used to be, apparently grieving and crying. The figure turns, and Maddie realizes it’s actually a woman—her mother, but with short hair. She starts crying and runs to her mom. They embrace. Her dad appears too, joining in the group hug.

Maddie’s parents tell her that the rest of her family is safe and waiting for them to return with her. The “imminent threat” was not real, merely part of a “land grab” and fraud; a new government is now in place, and things are returning to normal. Maddie doesn’t care about the specifics. She is just glad to have her family back. They get in the helicopter and fly away. Maddie meditates on how part of her will continue “haunting” the town that both kept her alive and tried to kill her, but she is most of all overwhelmed by the love she feels.