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Her dogma had nothing to do with wine, symbolic crackers and beautiful luxuriant robes and drapes. She worshipped something intangible, yet almost too simplistic to miss; her literature surrounded her everywhere.
Every dream was a foreshadow of what was to come, every whisper within the hallway of her tormented home was something worth grasping, worth paying close enough attention to interpret the diction, how it came to be such and what may it mean for her own wounds that slowly mended and healed beneath a blanket of novels and poetry.
When the three women had first moved into that home, that desolate place, more oxymoronic blend of freedom and oppression than kitchen, living room, and bedrooms, she had found a skull. It hung dismally in the basement, poorly hidden beside the washing machine, where things were dragged to be cleaned and pressed until they no longer smelt of the life and vitality that filled them, but of chemicals that restored them to perfection.
She hadn’t understood it then, but reflecting on that skull (where did it disappear to?) it was an all too clear sign of the emotional, spiritual, and physical death that the home would bring their small, shattered and shattering family.
That’s how things seemed to work within her world. How was it possible for two children to be emotionally fed and placated by television for seven hours a day? Could one die of malnutrition of the soul sooner than any food shortage or famine ever bring?
Grocery stores were comforting: they never ran out. There were always enough colors and noise, no one ever went hungry within the aisles of prepackaged artificial flavorings and trans fat phenomena. No mother could forget to feed her own child within a grocery store’s walls, she’d imagined somehow the clerks, with their tidy and innocent aprons, would speak up, say something to the woman whose child hung limply on the side of the cart out of exhaustion, confusion, loneliness.
It was difficult arguing with her mother about buying food; money was a touchy subject, fundamental needs even touchier. She’d felt guilty asking a woman who was supposed to be raising, rearing, leading their unit of developing individuals and growing girls to put food in the pantry.
We can feed ourselves; we just need you to supply us the materials. Prayer somehow always came to mind in these instances. If God had given the world and the small beginnings of humanity so much to work with, was it truly too much to ask for a pop tart or some saltines? She didn’t dare tell her father, for even though she went days without physical and emotional sustenance within her mother’s walls, her father’s home drained even more out of her.
Survival of the fittest. But who had even begun training to compete? Was there going to be a test?
And yet there was something sort of beautiful about that last day she’d ever live within those walls. The home was a torrent of clothes, papers, objects that cluttered and covered the more fundamental problem laying beneath their family’s dynamics and relationships, but she’d still found that quiet second to hear the silence which emanated from behind her mother’s door.
She was tired of remembering the following hour; after all, it was the solitude, the peace, after she’d been evacuated from the premises of death that meant something beyond the screaming sirens and incessant phone’s ringing.
She’d known instinctually her mother was dead before they’d ever needed to pick the door’s lock. The feeling had nestled itself somewhere safely within her gut, warming a spot just below the sternum that had been cold, dry, and barren for quiet some years. And that feeling hadn’t exactly left; she’d been awakened in that moment to something deeper than emotions, it was a pulling that guided her gently through the practicalities and small details of life.
For the first time, she worried about nothing in her life. A heavy sense of peace overwhelmed every pore in her body until she awoke groggy from the slumber that had captivated and determined her life for all her small years had been worth. Was this how humans were supposed to feel, or was this simply feeling? Awaking from a lifelong numbness was easier than imagined; but was there more to be had beyond that intuition which only failed when destined to?
Soon she was recognizing faces and places that she knew as part of her future persona, as though she were slowly stumbling upon the remnants of a puzzle piece shattered into oblivion at her birth and she was meant to piece her picture together until the last corner could usher in her complete death, a transition into something that wouldn’t be shattered, broken, marred from every beginning, but would be born, remain, and forever be whole.
Who was to say such a thing existed or could even survive within a world that was so dependent upon destructive change and shifts? But it clicked all too well to simply ignore the beautiful prose life was composed so delicately of each and every instant.
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Writer Profile
Kelsey
Writing has always been my backbone, especially now as I work my way through my mother's unexpected death. Music is a large influence in my lifestyle, as is classical literature. I'll be graduating from high school in the spring of 2007, so college plans are basically consuming all of my free time right now. At school, I'm an editor for my newspaper and yearbook, as well as involved in National Honors Society, Key Club, and am starting a global awareness club. Outside sources of writing for me include a bi-monthly column for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and published poetry through the International Library of Poetry and Noble House Publishing.
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