[image from robertarood.wordpress.com]
Written for the prompt: Recalled to Life
In childhood,
gentle heart
shattered by violence
and drunkeness,
retreating
into numbness,
making my way
through,
certainly at risk
of making
a too-soon marriage
to escape,
hoping
to create
a home.
Marriage
was a cage
so small,
it took
a jackhammer
and sheer
desperation
to blow
my way out.
But
before
my spirit
even
had time to rise,
a vulture arrived,
and I was
his prey.
This time,
my heart
retreated
into the
frozen wasteland
of a Siberian
winter.
No one
- but no one -
other than
my kids
was going to
get back in.
Then, one day
in summer,
I walked in the door
of a coffeehouse
full of gentle folk,
beings who
lived
gently
on the earth,
whom I had known
were out there
somewhere,
for whom
I had been
searching
for so long.
I knew
right away
that I was home.
But it took some time
to relearn trust.
I read The Desiderata,
crying
as I read the words:
"You are a child
of the universe.
No less than the moon
and the stars,
you have
a right
to be here."
I had not
known that.
The gentle, loving people
accepted me.
They gave me space
just to be.
They did not
push.
They let me
feel safe.
In the warmth
of their sunlight,
the wasteland
slowly
began to melt.
My petals
began,
rather painfully,
to unfurl.
I began
to grow,
and then,
in time,
to glow.
My life-song
began
to sing
again.
Hope
had arrived,
and dreams,
and so much
laughter.
From the sad
and
painful past,
from abuse,
degradation
and betrayal,
from the imprisonment
of my spirit
to full and
glorious flight,
I was,
from that time forward,
recalled to life.
