PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

             The clock ticked by another minute; now symbolizing the hour, the second, I would be given to escape gracefully from the auditorium seating. I looked around at all the mesmerized faces staring thoughtfully to the one entrancing location. I was meant at this moment to be disruptive. I tried to sneak past all those faces, but many of them turned to me with questioning eyes. “Excuse me” was my only explanation. It wasn’t long before I was out, no longer hearing the words of Jeremy’s sermon. It wasn’t often I skipped out of church, but today was different. I had somewhere to go, someone to be, and an entire team to represent. It was team picture day at Mill’s Gymnastics USA and I was a part of the team.

             Now there was nothing particularly exciting about the drive – no signs suggesting today would be different han any other day. It was a typical twenty-five minute drive into the city of Southgate through stoplights, Sunday traffic, and other meaningless distractions. They meant nothing.  

             The opening and closing of our car doors and walking through the glass entrance doors was meaningless also. As was the stepping of my child-sized feet up those three cement steps and the grabbing of my hand for the side rail beside me. When that hand distinctively reached for the mailbox it had so often grasped, however, that was meaningful.

             My fingers traveled up and down the color coded file folders, unsure of the location to which my name has been relocated. That is when a hand fell upon my shoulder. A hand which had held me tight never allowing me to fall, a hand which had helped teach me my backward roll now over six years ago along with back tucks, clear hip circles and numerous amounts of other skills. That same hand now showed a lack of compassion and help. That hand was the messenger to the bearer of bad news.

             “Charlotte, where are your parents?” Lanny asked me, his stable, steady, confident voice now unsure and shaking. Mine responded to his, shaking and squeaky, hardly able to point him to the world outside.

             About ten minutes later, my voice was reassured of its fears as I was invited into the conversation. Lanny left me alone to the tearing faces of my parents. All hopes in my heart for good news were demolished, torn apart by those awful hands that had once worked to build me up.

             A burnt orange leaf fell from the tree before me, and with it’s dying words went the life I had been building for over half of my existence on earth. As the leaf was no longer a piece of the tree to which it had become accustomed, no longer was I a part of the team, the family, to which I had become accustomed. For once in my life I sat to admire the courage of the leaf, to be capable of taking the leap of faith into the unknown without question. There I sat with my life decision lying before me, already made, and still I clung onto the branch that had birthed me. Perhaps the leaf never realized its vulnerability, where as I did. But what if I hadn’t? What if both the leaf and myself had been violently dismembered from our branches, now simply waiting for the next uncompassionate being to simply crinkle us into the earth? Our genus and species would always remain the same as long as they existed, but as for our individual beings, we would slowly dissolve into the dust.