She stood at the brink. She had heard this been used as a
metaphor many times. “They are on the brink of destruction”, bringing this
person to the brink, and so forth. She looked into the fathomless ravine. As She
looked She saw faces emerge, She saw her mother, her father, her brother, the
children who had become hers, the loved ones who needed her in their lives and
all those who knew her through and through.
She didn’t just see the faces but heard the voices; the
laughter, the cries and the songs of these loved ones. With each face, each
sound, and each memory the pain grew. She remembered the food that She and her
mother shared on car trips, the conversations had. She remembered the feeling
of the land felt through tires on road trips, songs sung with no care of tone,
pitch, melody, or lyrics with her dad. She remembered the feel of shotguns and
the sound of clay pigeons shattering shooting with her brother. She remembered
the feeling of grass rolled in and the smell of rain that enveloped them as She
played with children. She remembered every place She received a smile at the
darkest time. She wore these memories like beads on a necklace around her neck.
She wore them as She searched through rainy forests looking
for magic. She wore them wandering through the sands and dry air searching for
hope. She wore them while wondering through the streets of big cities searching
for people She knew but hadn’t met yet. As She passed each house in the suburbs
and towns, She wore them looking for a place She knew as home. It was in the
prairies and valleys that She wore them feeling for the air that felt familiar
and carried with it the voices and laughter of others.
She had traveled through all these places finding joys and
tears, friends and foes, and some measure of all the things She had been
looking for. But She never found the true thing that She had been looking for.
Her journeys were long and often painful but had led her here, to the brink of
this cliff. She new that there was new land on the other side of the ravine but
She did not notice it. She only saw the blackness that seemed to hold all of
the things She had been looking for.
She sat on the cliff with her legs hanging over into the
darkness. She didn’t think to jump in or to wonder back from where She had
traveled. She had no thought of finding a way across. She just sat with her
memories and the echoes of her loved ones. No one came to sit with her and She
was not bothered. She knew that one day someone would come to show her the way across
and perhaps that person would be herself. Until that time She was happy to sit
and try to forget her pain.
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