It is six o’clock. It doesn’t matter if it’s morning or night.

It is six o’clock and I am alone.

I lived in a small house with my four children. Four people lived with us.

Every day, at six o’clock, they would sit on my children. And they would eat. When the next six o’clock came, they sat on my children again. And they would eat.

Sometimes they were quiet. Sometimes they were not. Sometimes the bigger ones were angry. Sometimes the smaller ones cried. Sometimes there was laughter. Sometimes there was sadness.

But always they came at six o’clock.

Sometimes they came and sat on my children and played games on my face. Or they would talk. Sometimes they stayed for many hours. I liked that. It made my children groan, or make noises when they were scraped against the floor. But these were our people.

One day the smoke came. It filled the house and I could not see.

Then the house was full of men wearing masks and carrying hoses and axes.

The people no longer come. And my children are gone.

I sit now in a small room with adopted children. These two children are made from metal and plastic. My own children were made from the same old tree where I was born. The man made us himself. And we knew he was proud of us.

The people who sit on these metal and plastic children are not nice. They never come at six o’clock, and they argue every day. The arguments are always about the white powder they pour on my face.

I can still smell the smoke that took away my children and my people. I can still hear their laughter and their sorrows.

I miss my family. I miss the people who loved us. I miss the man who made us.

It is six o’clock. The not nice people are not here. I must wait.

I am alone.

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