As she stands close to me her face is wet and I can't tell the difference between the rain that has steadily fallen or the tears that have kept pace with emptied clouds.
Empty clouds, Empty, that is how I know she is feeling right now.
An empty vessel just waiting to be discarded, thrown into the dumpster as valueless as the belongings that are already in the landfill bound container.
She has tried to keep herself together now for three months, three months since the man she loved and pledged her life too left.
Left, with no talking, no discussion, no big fight, just arranged to have their children secreted away after all of us watched them play in their baseball game.
In the dumpster she pulls out a baby blanket, small and wet,
filled with memories of a newborn fast asleep.
She wishes she could cover her humiliation, she feels naked and exposed as neighbors
and passing cars take notice, some even colder than the rain,
asking if they can have some discarded item, an old dog kennel.
Children's school work, pictures from art class, more priceless than any
DaVinci or Rembrandt to this aching mother's heart.
She gathers them up and hugs them close to her breast, nobody but her father and sister can see her splintered and bleeding heart.
Garbage bag after garbage bag is thrown out to the road
as she watches it's seems like her life is tumbling like the thrown bags.
The truck is loaded with the gathered jewels of marriage and family,
wet, some ruined, we drive away so we can come back for more as the humiliation parade continues.
Finally, a man sworn to honesty and fairness arrives, reads a document,
the cold and deceitful heart is stopped, for a while.
When this day changes to the next everything she holds dear must be gone.
Gone, like her husband, her life, no, just moved to a place where she will begin again.
Begin again, she will, she comes from a family of strength and faith.
She will fight, will cry, again, again, until she thinks she has no tears
and then cry again.
As I stand next to her I see a beauty deep within that I never noticed
before the tears and the rain.
(still crying from the reading...)
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I related to this woman. She is a woman whose life, whose heart, has been ripped open never to be the same again.
I will be saving this poem in my "keepers" file. But tonight, I believe I will dream of her.
Thank you, Tedd <3