TWO WORDS A MILLION PIECES

At 35 she shattered! Her life was perfect or so it seemed to the world around her - even to herself. The perfect family, enough money, nice house, good job but she often had a nagging feeling, a horrible anxiety that everything in her perfect world was about to give way. Her father was in a hospital an hour away. He had just had surgery for cancer. She drove the hour to see him - alone. She entered his room - and was not at all ready for that reality- he was unrecognizable to her. He could not speak but as she opened the door to his room and walked towards the hospital bed he mouthed the words "HI SWEETHEART"! The words unspoken struck her like an electrical current - the same two words she had heard night after night when he entered HER room. Her whole life she had tried to keep those words from ever reaching her ears but now they struck her soul. Two words hanging in the air dripping with shame! The intensity took her to the floor, a fetal position from which she could not extract herself, gone was her voice and ability to move. He had no reaction, he just stared at her with those cold black eyes. She laid on that floor beside his hospital bed for what seemed hours under his gaze. A nurse came into the room, helped her up and out to the hall where she again hit the floor. She sat against the wall with her head between her knees the echo of the words screaming in her head. She swallowed the thick salty bile of every "HI SWEETHEART" and knew it was the taste of him! She left that hospital with a fear she knew but had never allowed herself to truly experience.
Passing a mirror in the hospital lobby she caught a glimpse of herself - the beautiful blonde hair cascading over her slender shoulders, the fur coat protecting her from nothing, the shiny black spike heel reflecting a a confidence that had never been her's. The blatant sexuality, always palpable and ever present, that she wore like jewellery in an effort to intimidate others and isolate herself. It all served a purpose - men were well aware that she was only a fantasy for them - never to be touched! She was totally unattainable, untouchable! The outward facade said to anyone who dared that they were not worthy - but only she knew that the unworthy one was her.
None of this offered any armour on this day. Glancing again in that mirror everything fell away, she saw herself small, thin, naked, alone and scared to death.
The beautiful blonde had shattered into a million pieces!

TATTERED

I can no longer see the brilliant blue of long gone years.

Tattered, torn and frayed in threads that dangle from past to present, forever, never again to be woven into the fabric of my life.  The hang, some softly waving in the worm wash of memories, some waving violently touched by the evil that touched me others still and lifeless, waiting.  Some pulse with electricity and light the sky, others hang like a noose limp and dead. Some dancing with the joy and music of their time! Some taught with expectation and desire searching for connection and others waving with hope or singed with the intense heat of lust, love hurt and regret.

The longer strands weave themselves twisted and tangled across the black abyss that is my life.

Those jeans the symbol of rebellion and youth, the colors long faded to grey with no trace of the vibrant blue that once was. The stiff fabric weakened with the passage of time, softened and silky making way for small tears at first! Every strand holds a memory faded with time and lost. Everyone I every touched and the few that ever got to really touch me. Stained with the salt of a million tears!

I cannot keep my hands away but the more I touch the more fragile the fabric becomes!

I run my fingers across the broken threads pull at time and try in desperation to piece them back together. As I pick the hole ever expanding some threads barely able to hold on. Yet I hold on to them those faded tattered jeans that once fit me like a glove protecting me, forever trying to wiggle myself into the past. The need and desire to be enveloped in my own history.

The sand of time still in the pockets the edges now soft and warm. Those pockets dark and deep held all the secrets I had stored in them. The small holes in the bottom where many things found were lost.

The cuffs jagged and torn with a million steps taken to nowhere!

The zipper and button hard to open at first stiff and new.  Tight but with just enough give to allow the hand of a lover to slip between the fabric and my skin searching and frantic! My hips arching to feel that touch.  Those jeans slipping from my body leaving me naked and exposed.

Places soft wet and sticky with loves remembered and loves lost. Never washing those jeans for fear the scent of you would disappear forever. The telltale bloodstains of a young woman reminding me that I was alive and life was full of possibilities.

Hands deep in the back pockets, pulling me closer until our bodies touched soft and sweet, the smell of your breath and the touch of your lips searching for an opening. Fingers hooked in the belt loops as we walked thru life.

Fragile now the fabric, disintegrating in my hands, the small pieces falling and lost. I put my fingers in the void but soon there will be nothing left. I can no longer see the color.

VIOLENT IS YOUR RIDE

I watch as you ride past fast, loud, hard. I see you on the roads tempting your own fate. The black bike an extension of yourself, the power you crave, the control you want. Straddling that big black bike - controlling her. The need for that power between your legs, feeling that pulse in your groin. Dressed in black, hard cold foreboding is your ride. Shifting thru time and space faster and faster, never reaching your destination. The chrome drawing attention, the helmet seemingly protecting you but it cannot protect you from your fears! Saddlebags filled with broken dreams and broken promises. The hard black boots keep you from experiencing your journey, never allowing you to feel the road on which you are travelling. Your bare feet never touching the hot pavement, the warm sand or the soft rain, they insulate you from your world. The roar of her engine quiets the screams in your head. Your ride is solitary, for speed does not allow for connection. Your relief is temporary as you are a human being needing to feel the pulse of another. For that short burst of adrenalin and speed you are and have everything you wish for. It is an illusion for when she is parked you can no longer get what you crave from her. She is once again cold and hard. She can never wrap her arms around you, caress your skin, lie next to you warm and real, breathing heavily in the softness of your neck. You can never be naked with her, exposed, vulnerable as her cold hard steel and your black leather protects the soft underbelly that you try and hide from the world and yourself. She can never feel your warmth, your kindness and the gentle soul she protects!

RAVAGED

We are all ravaged by time and the experiences and choices we made in the youth of all our yesterdays. These haunt us and shape our lives in many ways.  Our youth travels with us with every yesterday. The goal, if there is one, is to accept all the choices we made in all our yesterdays and accept who we are with the same empathy and compassion that we would afford others. In the end there is no time for what ifs!