Premonition of a Burning

She’d searched headstones, articles, hospitals, and tent cities

for the huddled figure in her dreams.

In the burnt-out husk of an old hotel,

she at last found that huddled figure, in a wheelchair, still breathing.

She’d been a practical woman once, of little vision or mysticism,

until the dreamt premonition of her accident.

After losing her daughter, 

she turned against her academic colleagues to study precognition.

Despite years of effort, she never experienced another premonition,

so she turned to drugs.

This huddled figure, here,

she’d often seen in her chemical-induced trances,

but she’d never seen its face.

Now it looked up at her.