Her mouth is agape. Her heart is muddled in everything she never wanted in this life. Yet, she dances. She swirls in red sequined covered Tom’s. Her heart battling between resting and rising.
Not rising with love. Rising with rage. Boiling over with a grand old fashioned notion there’s one decent place for her life to fit into his life, their world.
Summer is coming to end in West Virginia. Temperatures are falling, in a weird what-will-come in only a few brief months. This isn’t normal for the time of year. There are too many new normals we all must conform to in the present day.
She swings her glasses off, letting them fall on top of her chest. She doesn’t want to see the world in focus anymore. Let it go blurry and misconstrued. Tiny specks with multiple images forming around the each item. Pictures are fuzzy. She’s concentrating on the particularly warm and happy memories.
Her head is aching from all she needs to do. Finish the plot. Write the characters with believable intentions. Write a query. Write. Write. Write. Don’t let too many sites fall to the wayside. Keep up the overwhelming pace of her 30 year-old self. Those slate blue eyes don’t have the staying power they once held. They want to close and drift off to some beautiful dream. They ache for sleep. Too much rest and eye dust. Her back hurts. Her body craving weights and water. Not to drown.
No, we are well pass the wishing for death. Life is what it is.
It’s a beautiful hope in the back of her mind. She’d like to see two souls connect before her lifetime ends. It’s the words dancing to her melodic finger-strokes on the keyboard. It’s the laugh of a little boy, youth’s sweet innocent. He doesn’t understand hate, not yet. Soon enough, his mama frets he’ll know too early.
She lifts weights and swims miles trying to make her body return to its previous worn teenage perfection. Her mind achingly recalling the way boys used to call back to back asking for her. The face cream is slathered on at night trying to keep her skin tight. Promises to keep the pores small. Keeps aging at bay for another damn day. She believes the hype every night. Practices archaic rituals that a vast majority of women before her sacrificed their faces to.
Wash the face with cold wet water. Use specific make-up remover for the eyes. Tone with rosewater. Let the skin breath. Cake on the night cream and highlight the eyes with cool gel. Age comes anyway. It creeps unknowingly onto her body at night. Not asking to rest on her face or her sagging breasts or her spotted, worn hands. Age comes and steals another day.
There are days she can’t remember if she ever even had a youth? Did she blink and miss the wild nights with strange boys riding in their cars. The nice ones who took her to lunch. The mean ones who said they would call but never did. Her first love, a gemini eternally tattooed on her soul. Those green eyes and broad shoulders can never be forgotten. She’d crawl onto his lap and felt a satisfying safety net would forever hold her.
The safety net grew, and she couldn’t lay there any longer.
One thing can never change. Her dancing to her beat. Her longing for love. Her ill-tempered soul capturing the day’s belief in better. Better tomorrow. Better life. Better world. All better. She strives towards one goal: better.
Love, life, and the days in-between led her to making their lives only better. A little cleaner, wipe the dirt out of the soul. Let his eyes see what she’s never known. Wrap arms around him. No matter what, you are loved sir. He is her confidant, and they can’t undo those days no matter how hard each of them try.
Kiss each other cheeks, let hands flow onto another. She knows never to selfishly hold onto to a love, because if she does then four people will hurt. Him, her, the man who could love her, and the woman destined to love him. Too many lives stand to be hurt in having a greedy chokehold on what never belonged. Together. Whimpering. Letting go.
Dancing with enigmatic presences. Dancing only with her words. Dancing with a broken heart filled with hope. She dances, her legs always moving to her heartbeat. Her back sways to life’s clockwise movement. Her lips stay perched and parched, ready to kiss the sky.
*****
Rachel E. Bledsoe is a writer and an Appalachian Misfit Mama. She enjoys swimming, long walks on the beach, and Marie Antoinette biographies. She is the sole voice and writer behind The Misfits of a Mountain Mama. You can visit her on Facebook or on Twitter @MisfitMtMama.
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