In the Shadows of My Heart

The sun birthed itself into the murky shroud of dawn. How many sunrises had I seen just like it since the cloud of doom mushroomed over us a year ago? Has it truly been a year yet? More? Or less? It's Monday I think. It hardly matters since each day is the same joyless passing of time as all the others.

I've stopped worrying about the niceties of life. Even though there is hardly any sun, I've settled on a comfortable sun dress to wear. No reason to change it really. One less routine to fulfill. No water left to wash anything so if I'm going to be dirty and grimy I might as well wear something I like. I shaved my head though. There's no mirror to see whether I have hair or not so why not make it easy on myself. It cheated the lice out of their nest and gave me a reprieve from the biting and itching.

The sharpness of my mind fades along with the rest of me as the sickness takes its toll over me. So many already gone. Some quietly and some in agony. The vocal ones are the worst piercing the otherwise soundless air with their screams and cries of despair and pain that is all consuming. I dread the day my unraveling reaches that point. Perhaps I will end myself before that or at the very least when I'm certain the end is arriving. I'll use the clasp of my locket to open my wrist and set myself free. Dieing this way is supposed to be painless. Just drifting off into a deep and welcomed sleep.

I open the tiny heart-shaped locket and kiss the faded photos of my husband and daughter. How I miss them. Even though they perished early on, the pain is fresh. And like every morning since their vanishing a tear slips from the corner of my eye and slides down my face to my chin and plops unceremoniously onto my chest as their painful memories stir in the depths of my heart. So many choices made and unmade and no time left to change any of it even if I could. Would I even try if I had the time? I suppose I'll never know.

But I do know in the Shadows of My Heart live many things. Some fleeting thoughts never birthed. Others dreams that withered and died from neglect as I spent all my days fighting the weeds in the gardens of other's lives. My spirit once soared with delight, and boundless creativity. But it shriveled and closed tightly around me strangling in a cage of brokenness. Instead of tending my life, I attended to others. I gave myself away second by second, minute by minute that made days that turned into years. My withered soul looks at the path behind me, crooked, twisted, my blood flowing in places where I crawled across the broken glass of others lives. Those parts of the path are many, far too many. I see now all the roads not taken. Roads that could have saved, if not others, at least myself. But I continue on my brokenness towards a grave I am not ready for because I realize only now I never truly lived my own life. I allowed myself to be a willing prisoner in the lives of others. All my antics saved them not but merely propelled us all towards an end that would leave us bloody and broken. We say we champion those who cannot save themselves and yet, we were in exactly the same plight. No one came for us - they were too busy wallowing in their own shortfalls. In the end all our efforts did nothing for them and nothing for us.

And now with these sour thoughts settling on me, the world shrivels on its own vine too ruined to sustain life. And my life is too ruined to sustain me. Hope is a commodity long gone.. Perhaps today will be the day after all that my tiny locket helps my heart to stop beating in a space too filled with pain for it to continue on.