On the Road

Her eyelids open to the glorious onslaught of untamed light reflecting off the shards of the window's shattered glass. She throws off the dilapidated blanket, shivering in the brisk morning air, squinting at her surroundings--the battered coffee table, the stained rug and peeling walls, the long-forgotten prismatic fragments. The previous owners didn't even bother taping up some cheap plastic sheeting over the gaping hole. No matter, this was just as good a one-night dwelling as any. Nevermind it didn't exactly feel like home--she didn't really know what she called home anymore, anyway.

Too much thinking, she tells herself. She slides on her red sneakers and glances at her reflection in the dirt-caked mirror left on top the dresser, pulling her long hair back behind her neck with a harsh tug. She strides to the empty window frame without a glance back, leans against the marred steel and looks out at the field of dried grass and weeds eating away at the lonely road. This quaint place, now so utterly abandoned, she thinks, but stops herself. Just another place, can't get sentimental about it. So many places in the world.

She steps onto the windowsill and stares at the ground, judging the height. Nothing she hasn't done before. She gathers the unruly folds of her sundress in one hand, puts the other out for balance, and steps off the edge. The drop is short and she makes a perfect landing, pausing only to brush the stray foxtail off her shoe. Once again she is in motion, walking with a purpose.

She treks through the knee-length grass, edges tickling the bare skin of her legs as the wind tosses her mane free from its messy knot and the sun heats her uncovered shoulders. She turns the corner and heads toward the road. Her beat-up Mustang waits for her in the ditch like a faithful dog. She pulls her wad of keys out of the hem of her dress--what good would a dress be without pockets?--and looks at them in mild contemplation. Yes, she decides, slipping all but one off the keyring and letting them fall into the dead earth as if letting pieces of herself fall away.

She settles herself in the driver's seat, revs up the engine and pulls onto the road while fumbling around for the sunglasses she knows are somewhere in the mess of junk on the passenger seat. No longer squinting from the light of the sun, she opens a bag of chips for breakfast and turns the radio up loud enough so that she drowns out her singing voice as well as her own thoughts. She braces herself. There is a long day of driving ahead. She better start it now.

Masked Sunshine

So falls the rain, and with it, she casts away those heavy emotions, letting them fall from her like a spectacular molting, a mysterious unveiling of all that was and will be as water and sparks seep into the earth. She watches in awe, faces the sky and rain and finds herself dancing like she never has before.

The girl will rise from the ashes as the phoenix of old once did. Though bathed in the moments of sorrow and coated by the outpouring of the heavens, a light still burns inside. That light is the power to defy the chaos of life, to dance to the song of the storms. For every star in this world is forged from an inner chaos,

and in letting go she has embraced that chaos. She wonders where all the light has come from, and in this second of esctasy and euphoria she realizes it is herself. A single flame in the darkness. And then she realizes that's indeed all it is and comes crashing down from the stars. It's dark around her and she is the only one, and to glow is not enough because she is so completely, utterly alone. But then...could it be? Another light flickers from far off in the distance.

The girl may wander in the dark, alone for a time. Many others have traveled this route, it is a part of life. The darkness envelopes and consumes, but the girl will find a way out. She will learn not to believe in others who believe in her. She will learn not to believe herself for other peoples' sake. She will believe in herself for herself. She will always have the lights that shine off the trees in the near distance, that beckon a new day and a new way,

and she will be the sunshine as she has been before and always will be.

(Half the glory must be given to fellow writer and dreamer Steve Sonnier
while the piece itself must be dedicated to my dear sister muse)