Bernadette In New York City
Her young eyes watched her mother's eyes, watched the sadness cross her mother's face like art in reverse, the cruel shadow of certain sorrow stealing the colours of the day and leaving only a stark and crude pen and ink outline in black and white.
Her tiny hands felt the tremble of her mother's fingers, an electric horror that travelled from one generation to the next, a steady drain of life's energy that seeped outwards and nowhere like the quiet that follows a summer thunderstorm when suddenly the lights flicker off and the world spins into dark chaos.
Her tender heart searched for the beat of her mother's breaking heart, grasped at the strange new silence, and waited in the vacuum of time for the link of pulse to return.
Her innocent spirit reached out for her mother's steady resolve, where she had always found the certainty of hopefulness and love, but where she suddenly discovered only the damaged fragments of a desperate soul screaming for solace, amidst the din of a million million other tortured souls screaming for comfort as well
She is older now.
She barely knows her mother anymore, and she has little if any memory of the father she lost when he fell from the sky and was reduced to rubble.
Even as she watches over his photograph beside her bed, his voice is gone, his rough hands no longer tussle her hair, and the fresh smell of his kiss has drifted away forever.
And so, she wears a small gold star on a thin tarnished chain around her neck, a daily reminder of him that she touches gently before falling asleep and dreaming quietly of the life she will never have, unaware that while she sleeps, half the world wants nothing less than to steal her every dream away.
Her young eyes watched her mother's eyes, watched the sadness cross her mother's face like art in reverse, the cruel shadow of certain sorrow stealing the colours of the day and leaving only a stark and crude pen and ink outline in black and white.
Her tiny hands felt the tremble of her mother's fingers, an electric horror that travelled from one generation to the next, a steady drain of life's energy that seeped outwards and nowhere like the quiet that follows a summer thunderstorm when suddenly the lights flicker off and the world spins into dark chaos.
Her tender heart searched for the beat of her mother's breaking heart, grasped at the strange new silence, and waited in the vacuum of time for the link of pulse to return.
Her innocent spirit reached out for her mother's steady resolve, where she had always found the certainty of hopefulness and love, but where she suddenly discovered only the damaged fragments of a desperate soul screaming for solace, amidst the din of a million million other tortured souls screaming for comfort as well
She is older now.
She barely knows her mother anymore, and she has little if any memory of the father she lost when he fell from the sky and was reduced to rubble.
Even as she watches over his photograph beside her bed, his voice is gone, his rough hands no longer tussle her hair, and the fresh smell of his kiss has drifted away forever.
And so, she wears a small gold star on a thin tarnished chain around her neck, a daily reminder of him that she touches gently before falling asleep and dreaming quietly of the life she will never have, unaware that while she sleeps, half the world wants nothing less than to steal her every dream away.
