I grew up in a regular middle-class household in Midwestern America. Domesticated I became at a young age. My conditioning would never subside beside the fireplace. now here's a story........................................................ Cold Wisconsin winter's bring delusion to bleary eyed children in the midst of feverish journeys. Through wooden passages of confusion,..and onto stained glass cathedrals of the north. Just a hint of sleep paralysis, cinnamon faeries sprinkle on their dreams during the vulnerability of youth. I'd speak through the walls, but the narrow hallways would only breathe back,...or sway in the afternoon,..remaining still,.. but then holding the sunlight captive as it displayed rays onto the smooth Oriental rug in well furnished living rooms of our past. A piano would never play itself,..but would sometimes rock a chair through the floorboards. A warm splinter of ecstasy scurried down her spine consequently after receiving a letter in the middle of the schoolyard during the hearth of a lazy Autumn Tuesday. Her heart raced her all the way home down sleeping rural community sidewalks. Her single foot elevated the other one as swiftly and gracefully as the air she stepped on. The daunting trees never doubting her due arrival. Her parents would pretend to listen,...while their hearts told them no. A divorce would be out of the question,..if only for their daughter's sake. That evening around 8:30 P.M. her mother found her dyeing her air in front of the upstairs mirror. A talk radio hummed softly through the thin walls of the adjacent room. Her father would pass out early every night from a gin and tonic hangover,...then wake up disgustingly early with a bad case of jitters, tiptoe downstairs to the cabinet ,...pull out the old Seagrams bottle from behind the seasoning shelf, then crawl back up the stairs to bed. Lying there awake he would play out the previous evening's sordid images in his head. "Did he finally cross the line this time?,...I only slammed down the bottle hard on the counter and cursed a couple times...",.He would repeat this to himself until he could justify his own reasoning behind his own self explained nuttiness.
After all he wasn't that bad a guy. When they were younger he charmed her all the way to an out of town chapel an hour and a half drive away. A winding road unraveling and climbing the Appalachians. The tall order of love they found much too demanding after a short period time though,... bad timing,..she was already pregnant. The rest of the time until Sarah became a teenager they did a good job hiding it,..never coming home at the wrong time,.or staying over a friend's house while supposedly out on business affairs..It's only come of late,...the tidings of false love beneath a caving ceiling of despair
The next day would be Friday though,..and Sarah,.. much to a fifteen year old's dismay,. was widely preoccupied with her first high school dance. The world at her heels she could not wait to see the boy that never spoke to her,..but only passed along his love in writing. On loose leaf paper he would would disclaim his love for her. Only in passing between the locker-rooms,..boiler-room and cafeteria, they'd exchange eyes at each other,...then look for closure amidst the puzzling and grey gravitational cobblestones that assembled the two lovebird's driveways.
Sunday that weekend came around as quickly as her former life had dwindled. With a new kind of hopelessness. A fresh cut into her soul,....a brand new void for suffering. And just as her mother's eyes,...but not as wise,.. the boy's open conversations defied her feelings for this or that. All to be lost among a moment's decision. An unopened reconstructed package of heartache to be dismantled with the quick shortcoming of his switchblade.
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