24 years

{11.8.2010}

24 Years of hard walking and calloused eyes

unforgiving pavement haunted by the echoes of refrains come and gone, decoratively concealed with a managed ficticious perfectly practiced smile.

24 Years of writing and rewriting

definitions assigned by ineligible authors, input rendering life and death, authoring reality for yet another purposed life

24 Years of chasing sunsets

incessantly fading, tripping on an oblivion of treadmills in search of approval, groping around a perplexity of fallacy

24 Years of stop and go sprints

to launch this kite off into an airstream of freedom, to be weightless, and float on the soft swells of clouds straining against the single string holding it prisoner to earth.

But

24 years brought a new emancipation

hidden in the yellow and orange October woods of Georgia, a dawn treading dance that neither looked to the left or to the right for steely cold stares or nods of validation

24 years glanced over her shoulders, just for a second

and laughed at the rebellion of 19 and cried at self hatred and abuse of 16, 24 clung to the broken 22 and smiled at the innocence of 10.

24 held a box over her head

and hurled it to the ground with a choked laugh of hysteria, a freedom anthem 24 in the sky with diamonds and a pocket full of songs and new found liberty.

24 squinted against new boundless boundaries

pressures, expectations, rules, sizes, carbohydrates, and other restraining taboos flew out the window into the shrapnel of a 100 wars.

24 flew a new flag

of discovery, of questions, of intimacy, of self discovery and gratitude, all under the umbrella of one love, a creator holding the hand of a child walking into her destiny.

☮ ☮ ☮