Birth, the beginning
Death, the end
New, fresh, vibrant, green
Old, crumbled, broken, grey
Both with blood, pain, tears
Anticipation, announcing hope for the future
Evasion, eventually yielding to the inevitable fact of life
Both keeping secret their itineraries
Ripening fullness in the sun
Rotting frailness in the twilight
Birth, the beginning
Death, the end
communities
all of our hopes, fears, dreams; shared joys & shared sorrows
starving hand-in-hand; shoulders to cry and lean on
humans
men women and children
loving living crying dying
ethnocentrism
anything you might think, feel, say, do, hear, taste, see, or smell
shall always be overshadowed by those lofty things that I
in my superiority will think, feel, say, do hear, taste, see, and smell
You’re moving to a new house, and not of your own accord, either. At the end of your lease your landlord decided on a whim to sell the property, leaving you no option to renew the lease. You have 30 days to get out. Luckily, you found a new place nearby, and you’ve arranged to be off work to make the move. Not so luckily, your husband has a fever the first day of the move and it’s twenty degrees outside. With a stellar display of your super-woman strength, and the help of a strong friend, however, you manage to move the biggest pieces of furniture on the first day, leaving some debris and your kitties at the old house to be moved when the sunlight returns tomorrow.
After scarfing down a pizza in Boxland Central, also known as your new home, you’re starting to feel clammy, realizing that you won’t be spared your husband’s illness. So you and your better-half make the decision to camp out in the living room and sleep on the mattress where it lies in the floor, being too sick and tired to set up the bedframe, the boxspring, and the mattress in their proper place in the bedroom. Sleep doesn’t come easily in the unknown darkness of the new place. The lights shining in from outside are alien, and the fever chills don’t bring comfort to the situation.
And then, in the unfamiliar darkness you hear a pitter-patter, a squeaking and a scurrying of tiny toes on hardwood floors. You know without having to guess what’s sneaking around in the darkness: mice – eek! Not that you’re terrified by small rodents, but you know that they can climb, and you’re only a foot off the floor, and you just know that if you close your eyes there will be mice in your bed. So you hop up, flip the switch, and your suspicions are confirmed. In the florescent glow of late-night artificial light you see the tiny grey minions with pink feet and black eyes staring back at you from the corner, as if you’re the one intruding on their turf and not the other way around.
There’s no choice but to stir your husband, despite his habit of sleeping soundly. He grumbles and groans and grudgingly gains his mind about him enough to understand what you’re telling him: that you must leave this place or be overtaken by mice! So you grab all the blankets you can, because the heat’s been turned off at the old house, load up into the frosty car, and travel the six blocks back to your old house. Inside, this once-familiar comfort zone no longer feels like home, what with all of your furniture already transported away. But your kitties are happy you’ve returned, and so you bed down together, in what you reckon to be the warmest room in the house, one big happy family. Now sleep comes to you like a long lost lover, and in your feverish dreams you plot revenge upon the mice: letting loose the kitties in the new house tomorrow.
Once upon a time I was a princess,
Hiding in a castle from the world.
A knight in shining armor for my love,
And so I thought would be my fate.
Until one day the spell was broken,
So quickly did the doubt appear.
I found myself unsatisfied, wanting more,
So I turned to the next chapter.
No longer was my life a fairy tale,
I was just a girl wandering the wide world.
Looking, searching for my identity,
And then there was another.
A helping hand, an empathetic ear to listen,
And a keen intellect to help me find
My own way through the tangled labyrinth
That I’ve learned to be the Real World.
All the people pass me by
Traveling, conversing together
Engrossed in their own lives
No-One taking notice of me
As he’s walking down the street
The man with the crazy eyebrows
Looks at me but through me as he
Walks down the street mumbling
The girl with the transparent face
Is consumed by her primary goal
She sees only that which is in her path
I’m rendered invisible in her eyes
The vehicles working the asphalt
Their petrol exhaust sharply contrasting
With their shiny shiny paint jobs
Sleekly passing and not yielding to me
All the busy busy bodies keeping going
And doing, and doing what it is that they do
Perhaps on occasion stopping, looking
But usually not at me
It matters not a whit whether
They notice me, my noticing
It’s magic of the fairy-godmother sort
I am here to take notes at all
the shoes that she wore
the night he loved her
still live inside her closet
the red silk is still stained
from the rain that fell
and the shoes are never worn
the left strap is torn
from when she slipped
and fell but he caught her
neither shoe has been worn
since she came home late
that night bringing him
as years have witnessed
the shoes will remain still
to keep memories alive
in the dark closet
those old shoes testify
to a love otherwise discarded
Daytime and the sun shines bright;
the world is limitless to me.
Life exudes from all around
and happiness turns to delight.
Warmth enfolds me and I feel
the essence of life, heat.
But night will come haunting soon;
it never fails to bring despair.
All hope is lost and so am I,
darkness obscuring my path.
For in the night the pain returns,
my soul seeks not to rest.
