Everywhere she went, she wasn't there. Her voice was not her own, but a recording from years past. Her body went through the motions of living as her spirit moved out. The sun had become a curious onlooker to her life, she noticed in the corner of her eye. Distracted by dead dreams, sorrow her final celebration. These were a few of her horrific things.
"The smell - that new car smell - it smells like...victory!"
Her nephew was showing off his recently purchased American dream. She could barely remember the last time an inanimate object gave her that kind of excitement. She emitted the expected words from the midst of her grieving slumber, even congratulating herself afterwards on her acting job. Had she been honest as she wished to be, she'd have told him the car had no meaning just like everything else in this world.
Worst of all, she discovered her divorce a bigger failure than her marriage. Freedom from "that man" had made her realize her prison was her own. She raged at the face in the mirror for having got her in this impossible position of falsified blame. The detached deviltry of her bridge burning left her at sea with no land in sight. Which way do you row your boat when every direction looks the same?
Had she followed the vein of honesty she cried out for, she'd write "FOOL" on her forehead every morn for all the world to see. "I lied, I died" would be imprinted on her shirt. She would stand in front of her house, holding a sign saying "My injustice is my own!", protesting her life. She was rapidly using up her capital reserves paying rent due on her soul. Oh, to be free of pretending!
One stray morning she was busy dressing herself, forgetting who she was, experiencing an innocent moment, a painful reminder of what she'd lost. She felt she swam in an ocean of shame as others passed by in ships of joy. A few ships exhorted her to come aboard but that would mean even greater pretending, so she floated away wherever the salt water currents took her. She trusted anyone's decisions more than her own, giving self-righteous fools power over her love.
Her greatest fear was her ex would grow and mature, not staying faithful to their sordid contract of co-dependence. Only if he stayed as pathetic as she could her divorce be declared a success. Living in the shadow of irreversible disaster gnawed at her day and night, waking her in pounding fear in the middle of the fright. "What have I done to my life? It keeps getting worse!" Childhood photos stabbed her heart.
Her "plan" had been no plan at all. Just another waste of time, a political stance to appease the masses. She looked at the son and decided that was not for her. Who could believe in her now, the house-frau cow? "God will have to fix me." Which duly increased her bitterness regardless of how many "God is Great!" signs she plastered around the house.
Another sunset for the ages glowed over the ocean waters behind her house. She studied the sky to read God's mood. Surely her life wasn't meant to end up this way. Yet she didn't see another path. At long last she was forced to face to lie is to die. Too late, she wrote a poem on the beach.
I sit on the shore
A Florida whore,
Magic in the waves.
An ancient dream
This does seem,
With one foot in the grave.
Returning home
I'm left alone,
In a place no one stays.
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