My Lifeline

Oh God!

Thou art love!
I build my faith on that!

I know thee,
Though hast kept my path
and made light for me in the darkness.

Tempering sorrow, so that it reached me
like a solemn joy;

It were too strange that I
should doubt thy love.

~Robert Browning

water wings

A table tucked away in corner. Flooded with dusty afternoon sunlight.

She sits and stares.

Annoying music muffled by earphones playing empathetic music-feeding and soothing her pain. She sits in the café, in this corner, at a wooden driftwood table for two; sipping Jasmine tea from black mug. To her right a black kettle rests holding a reservoir. In front of her, sits her journal.

She sips, she sits, she stares.

She glances around every so often. She imagines a wise person meeting her eye across the room. This wise person with a knowing eye holds her gaze until they sit in the empty seat. They draw her layers with their words and speak life to her.She turns up her music. No one pays attention. The café's music is not fit for her mood. The weather is though; it is an overcast yellow day. It holds a wistful if only with windblown branches and tousled hair.

She sips her Jasmine tea and pours more from the pot.

Then, she embraces her pain.
It squeezes around her heart, the heart that doctors can't reach- her soul heart.
She tries to let the flavor of the tea, the sounds in her ears, and the wind in the windows melt over her. To consume her. She tries to force a smile with her eyes.
She glances down at her journal:
"Drowning, falling.
Slowly, sinking, holding my breath.
Everyone is outside, breathing, living, laughing.
My hope is here somewhere, I have to swim through to find it."

She looks up at the window again. Tired.
Being miserable makes you so tired. Tired of being miserable. But too tired to want anything else. She thinks. She considers writing that down. But that is too much work.

She stares. She waits until she finds a pocket of pleasure from what she sees, hears and tastes. Just enough to give her courage.She smiles with her eyes. A fierce determined smile. A transient smile of hope.

But she can't seem to stop the confusing words. They rush back at her and plunge her within herself. They make her sick. Regret. She shrinks wishing the words would consume themselves and pull her in. cover her. Drown her into a comatose state where she doesn't have to fight. Kill her. She is already half dead. Grieving the death of the living. The living cold. The unwanted.

The wind blows and locks her eyes on the waving branches knocking gently against the window. She pours more tea. Sip. Stare. Drama she tells herself. Stop it.

She wants to stand in the wind with her eyes closed, her arms out, her hair swirling. Flying.

She finds a voice of courage. The most courageous thing you can do is to move on and let go. She doesn't know how, but she takes the small piece of bravery she has and whispers for help, refuses blame, shuns bitterness.
She relaxes. She breathes. She smiles with her lips.

She finds she has been given just enough to find grace.
She has found her water wings.

"Sometimes Grace works like Water Wings, when you feel you are sinking"

~La Mantt