BELONGING CREATIVE
The dead-ended street
She stood in the middle of the street, where the wind washed on the sighing pavement with a hollow sound at midnight. Her empty eyes saw straight through the bleary neon lights flickering on and off the street signs.
She looked and saw nothing, gulping in cleansing, scouring draughts of air. Her hair whipped around her face, and the world was reduced to fragments and blurs, spots and smudges of something unreal. A train whistled through the air behind her, silent as a nightmare. Nothing had ever echoed so vividly as the moan of her own despair.
How long, O Lord, she could hear her soul choke on the words. How long?
Her throat closed in, and her knees creaked as they rattled, bone-weary.
How long?
How long, O Lord, am I going to toil for that which does not satisfy? How long am I going to last before I collapse?
The answer was simple, she always heard. But how could she make her faithless heart believe that everything would be all right when all of her being remained unconvinced? She fell back against a corner, and when she saw no one coming, she imagined the world had suddenly dumped all of its contents into someplace wonderful and terrible and had left behind only her and this dead-end street. Another train soughed past, and she bared her teeth in a bitter grin. The train thought it was going somewhere. But sooner or later it would be pulled right back to where it had started.
Just like her life. But, she wasn’t interested in retracing every step she had taken. She only wanted to purge them away, to sear them off her memory, her skin. She held a reproach in her heart like a brimful of stagnant water, and she wanted to swallow it just like she had always done, but her throat felt too solid and tiny. The wind stormed down the sidewalks like the mighty king of the Earth, and she ignored its powerful trajectory as it swept over her, almost as if yelling, “Get off my street!”
She threw her head back and tasted the tears,
She stood in the middle of the street, where the wind washed on the sighing pavement with a hollow sound at midnight. Her empty eyes saw straight through the bleary neon lights flickering on and off the street signs.
She looked and saw nothing, gulping in cleansing, scouring draughts of air. Her hair whipped around her face, and the world was reduced to fragments and blurs, spots and smudges of something unreal. A train whistled through the air behind her, silent as a nightmare. Nothing had ever echoed so vividly as the moan of her own despair.
How long, O Lord, she could hear her soul choke on the words. How long?
Her throat closed in, and her knees creaked as they rattled, bone-weary.
How long?
How long, O Lord, am I going to toil for that which does not satisfy? How long am I going to last before I collapse?
The answer was simple, she always heard. But how could she make her faithless heart believe that everything would be all right when all of her being remained unconvinced? She fell back against a corner, and when she saw no one coming, she imagined the world had suddenly dumped all of its contents into someplace wonderful and terrible and had left behind only her and this dead-end street. Another train soughed past, and she bared her teeth in a bitter grin. The train thought it was going somewhere. But sooner or later it would be pulled right back to where it had started.
Just like her life. But, she wasn’t interested in retracing every step she had taken. She only wanted to purge them away, to sear them off her memory, her skin. She held a reproach in her heart like a brimful of stagnant water, and she wanted to swallow it just like she had always done, but her throat felt too solid and tiny. The wind stormed down the sidewalks like the mighty king of the Earth, and she ignored its powerful trajectory as it swept over her, almost as if yelling, “Get off my street!”
She threw her head back and tasted the tears,