Blue doors stoic against white washed summer walls
What awaits me beyond those carefully curated wooden walls?
Are there candles aglow or choirs angelic?
A return to life which withstood pandemics?
Were every role played
Within the confines of finite memory?
Perhaps there awaits all which we’ve lost.
Tears shed over damp sheets
And fresh mounds of dirt;
Carefully sculpted castles for our bones.
For once I may say, we’ll never truly know.
As my ornate blue doors slide into the distance,
The way our true love fades
From your memories and words,
Meant for another, promised over sun bleached summer days.
A little story time to go with this little poem.
When I was a snotty pre-teen, maybe around 11 or 12, I was giving my mom a hard time as we drove home. I don’t remember about what, it doesn’t matter really but it was a moment for her that unleashed something else. Without saying much she swung her old minivan into the parking lot of a mixed Korean/Baptist church at the end of our street and started crying.
“Maybe one day I just won’t come home.”
I didn’t know how to react. I kept telling her it would be ok but what I really remember is that we were parked right in front of the church doors.
Looking back I’m fairly sure my mom probably suffered from the same anxiety and depression that now plagues me and my sisters in various forms. Coupled with the weight of my narcissistic father’s constant cruelty and I’m certain this wasn’t her only breaking point.
It may not have been a breaking point at all but more of a blip on the radar of constant pressure to provide when the one you’ve promised to walk beside has more or less declared “jokes on you”.
Today’s International Women’s Day and I’ve seen posts all over social media remembering and celebrating accomplishments. That’s wonderful, I embrace it. I also ask that we not forget about the women who are dragging themselves out of bed everyday simply because they have to. The women who have laid awake all night threatened by their own nightmares and now have little people depending on them to function. The women who have gently laid dreams aside or practice them quietly after hours because there’s simply no one else to “bring home the bacon” and the dreams they have aren’t to that point yet. The women who have found themselves trapped and unable to leave for fear, so they trudge through every day the best they can while pretending everything is ok.
Society has come far but society still has a way to go.
Daily Prompt – Uncompromising
