Youth and Other Works

Youth


Every summer she grew older, the woman, silver hair overtaking soft honey-blonde curls.
From the dreary attic where I sit, I look over through the window, escaping the monotonous click of a gleaming black typewriter...
Click.
And again I look up, boredom tempting me to push aside my druging work and stare the rich unfolding ripples of summer ourside.
Estranged from all that is within these walls, I push open the window and feel the laughing breath of sunlight blow on my face.
My eyes fall into the garden of the silver old woman, long a widow, still a lover of all things sentimental and free.
She's changed...
Her back arches more, her steps more labored as she moves.
She's getting older and older.
It doesn't equate in my head... what a youth.
Images of little old ladies being helped to cross the street rouse a little smile...
No, not her.
I know something that perhaps no one else has guessed, a private understanding of how her heart is stitched together, even from the bounds that a window necceccitates.
She is young as the sweet buds that open on a vine that trails up the chimney, as young as the teeny bird that lingers on her shoulder for a moment before flying home to love and happiness.
Young in her heart, she'll do the things I still can't... she'll never stand behind a window.
I didn't know where I was going until I was there, but unanticipatedly I find myself outside among the flowers, too, and all that I hold...
It is time to let go. I wish them to the sky, a sweet parting.
Goodbye to worry, goodbye to discontent...
I'm a free spirit.

Broken Record

I lie on my back in the grass, eyes closed over the swells of thought that come of silence.
I didn't come here to remember all that I've lost, but inevitably I return to that glitch in my mind that skips like a broken record.
Though I know I ought to forgive myself, I can't let go of guilt, irrational and unyielding.
I can't promise I love you, but I can't say that I don't,
And in an instant I am sick on the inside, the words in my mouth turning to ash, expired.
I want...
Tears spill over, but they're only dew to the grass.

Change

It's time... I know it's time, I know. Change hangs from the steel strings of my harp,
It dangles and shakes, a faint and sovereign call.
Delicately I maneuver the strings, painting my heart into the music, and foreboding, the song is so solidly different from before.
A golden melody sways me over to the metamorphasis, insistant in whispering...
Every note glints something new, a secret sadness lingering in the change.