The Composition
By Beverly Greene
By Beverly Greene
NOTE: This story is protected by international copyright laws and may NOT be reproduced in any form without the author's expressed written permission.
"Speak gently to my heart" she wrote with tears swelling up in her sweet, green eyes. She had been writing poetry in one form or another since the tender age of 12. Poetry had always been some type of therapy for her, a God-given outlet for her fear, anger, resentment, and most of all the confusion surrounding her still young life.
She sighed at the first line and looked up to stare out the window at the rain pounding down. She smiled through her salty memories at her childhood thoughts and wrote, "yee angels who still cry for me." She looked at the angry clouds and thanked them for the sentiment. She knew somehow that the heavens felt what she felt she still could not. "Wash it away and make me believe" was scribbled onto the now damp paper.
She lost herself in the past once more, at least the parts her mind offered. The pain was still there, cutting deep into her soul, never ending, never giving a few minutes of peace. The beatings by her father ended so long ago, almost 12 years ago now, but the cuts and bruises left on her child-self had not healed. The angry words said out of some misplaced hate still sat in the pit of her stomach like some unquenchable fire determined to consume her once and for all, trapping her in their hell. She prayed, "that someday it will all come to a final end".
She stared into the windows of her soul and looked for something so horrible. She looked for the ugliness, the lack of morals, the deceit that had been her label and yet she found none. She wiped away the tears on a now adult face and felt the child's pain burning her fingers. She tried to comfort herself once again, closing herself within herself in some vain attempt to calm her child, soothe her sobbing. She prayed for her, "Give me the tears of absolution," with a whisper of the pen.
She asked her child what it was that she wanted, and gave her answer a voice with "some unknown heaven here on earth". She cradled herself within her mothering arms, listening to the thunder scream for her, releasing something evil within her. The angry claps sent cold chills down her spine, saying what she could not say, had not been able to say.
She moved her chair next to the pane and opened the decaying window, hoping the rain would cleanse her somehow. "Wash away the days gone by, wasted in pain" she begged the drops with a tired little voice. As the cold wind blew through, she never seemed to notice that the degree that the degree that come from within.
The light from her lamp danced on the wet window seal, showing the colors outside of her monochrome life. Her child sang a remembered song from her favorite movie of hope in some vain attempt to recapture the good. "Give me a place over the rainbow" flowed like the rain onto the paper.
She felt their tears running down her own face with great sadness. She lifted her head to the heavens and looked upon the clouds with pleading eyes once more and begged the angels still crying for her, "show me what you have to offer". She had always wanted to lie on a soft cloud, safe above the world, able to sleep without fear or shame.
She listens to the silent angels, only crying for her lost innocence. They gave her no salvation from her private torment so she offered all she had left to give, "and I will surrender my soul fully". She wondered why it did not seem to be enough, would never be enough.
She closed her eyes and listened to the wind forcing its way through the defenceless trees. She could see in her mind's eye their tiny leaves, parts of their lives swiftly blowing away. And she dreamed, "oh, to sleep soundly through life".
As the wind crashed in all around her, its force stronger than her own, she forced her burning eyes open to see the leaves now resting on her lap. She wished she could put them back, take them to where they belong, let them die when their summer is over, when their fall has come to take them home. And she dreamed, "pain and fear obsolete and foreign".
She carefully collected the stripped away leaves, holding on tight as not to allow the hateful wind to rip them away from comfort again. She knew she could not return them to their ravished home, so she held them close to her heart, as if they were her own pieces of a shattered life. She cradled them with love and whispered softly, "oh, the childish dreams that never end".
The leaves clung to her, seemingly to return her affection, to find refuge in her arms since their home is no longer within reach. She appreciated their presence, pressing them against her chest like a newborn child of her own. Her child delighted in their beauty, drawn in simple lines, little parts of a complicated world. Her child whispered of the dreams, or of the leaves, "that always survive the fall-out".
She gathered her leaves and gently laid them to rest in an old paper bag remnant of some forgotten trip. She folded top down tightly, ensuring them no more damage, no interference with their peace. She placed the bag next to her bed, where she could keep a protective eye on them. She looked at the bag full of life's pieces with both joy and sadness. "No resolution tonight, no outside comfort", she reminded herself and wondered if it was emptiness or relief she felt.
She returned to her window view of the worldly fury just outside her own soul. She looked at the clouds once more with only one thought left in her mind. "Only one last request" she called out. She knew she had come full circle, getting no where, having gone everywhere, finding no solution, but finding some comfort nonetheless somewhere within her own self, in her own child.
She looked at her poem, the paper forever bonded to the window seal in the aftermath of the tears, the ink running like the black pain on her mother's cheeks, stained forever in her mind and she stubbornly refused to let even the tears of far away angels shed her pain stop her from dreaming. She proudly picked up her pen and scribbled..."Oh, yee angels who still cry for me, speak gently to my heart."
Go to the menu page to select another original work to read!
� 1999 Beverly Greene owns all rights to this original story.
This page is hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page
This page was created by and is maintained by