Revamped; A Featured Post

Eyes Cast Downward- Memoir Excerpt

Originally hand written in July 2015 Late Spring of 2014.  Just Months before liver failure Our eyes are nearly always cast dow...

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Such Is The Pain...




Dedicated To My Psychic Father,
 Happy Birthday David Robert, Bowie Knife In My Pocket.


I see her again.
She is all there is left;  of shattered and seventeen.



There is a sound of a baby's whimpering, it comes from a room very near to the one she sits in.
She is staring straight ahead.
Her shoulders begin to tremble.
Her chest begins to rise and fall more rapidly; she sucks in all the air, contorts her face as she grits her teeth so hard they nearly crack and crumble.
Then her eyes close as she folds into herself and her whole body began to quake. 

She stays just this way for a small while.

When she lifts her head up once more, 
you see then that her eyes are bleeding;
they must be.
For she does not cry;
Not ever.
The blood red rivers of sorrow,
 of rage.
The Niagara falling; disillusionments despair.
Monsterous monsoon of shame and terror.

Tis’ only the bloodshed of a warrior.

 Now she bows her head puts her arms out to either side and grips the cushions of the sticky faux leather couch and all you see is the quaking girls blonde cropped hair covering bleeding eyes. 
I think I heard her say something as she tries to build the dam again. 

What was it?
A barely audible, 
“Please?
Help?
Why?
God? “
Her strange language.

The babe’s sobs had grown louder as if the chord that tied him to her in utero was still intact. Her head jolts up and she is slamming and pounding those final bricks into their proper place.
Her stronghold,
Her barricade,
Her ancient dam is back up as quickly as it had been knocked down.
She slashes her palms across her face beneath her eyes.
Not wiping away tears.
Never.
This must be her war paint.
She takes a breath in and holds it as she puppeteers her body upward with an unforeseen, formidable strength. 
Once standing she marches toward the whimpering before it becomes an inconsolable battle cry.

She breathes out, but only once she reaches his crib and sees him holding onto the rails trying to balance,, his chubby knees buckling. 
He is not quite one year in a body of his own.



She smiles; 
A faint yet genuine smile and runs one fingertip under her eye.
“What’s wrong? What is it, my silly boy?”

He wobbles his way to face the sound of his Mother’s beautiful voice he knows so well; he is the only one that ever really heard it.

They make eye contact, and for a moment, all was becalmed.

When she lifted him up and out of his crib, felt the warmth of his breath against her neck, closed her eyes, listened to that breathing and as her lips touch to kiss the golden crown of his head, they linger there
within his silken strawberry blonde hair. 
She inhales deeply his secret message.


She brings his face gently to her own and holds him there;
skin to skin.

She contemplates a response and then whispers in his ear…

‘I know my beautiful boy, I know.’

Silence for a moment,  another few breaths calming herself and calming her child. 

Then with an assured tone of voice and a look of certainty she continues,

“I love you.
I love you so very much.

“You are my prince and one day…

One day, I know, that I will be your queen.

I will be a great queen, I promise. You’ll see...

Then, one day…

You will be a King.“


She allows one steady crimson rivulet 
to trickle from her eye.

Binding their ivory cheeks in blood.


Mary Catherine,  Cowardice Queen


No comments:

Post a Comment

Anything to say on the subject?