by Carol Ann Conover

Created on: June 11, 2009

A Year After: Autumn Anew

The spicy scented smoke rose, twisting in the night air like spirals of silk as she exhaled her clove and turned her glance upward to the New Moon. The sweet, pungent smell reminded her of autumn nights back home and she was thankful that this night was brisk; just fifty-seven degrees in Pompano; enough of a drop to make it actually seem like the holidays.

The night before Thanksgiving and as per usual her mood was pensive; her mind pushing with all its might toward positivity if she could but conjure some insight of the future; force her fertile mind into revealing some instinctive clairvoyance that would offer peace and assurance that she had woven, with the tightly raveled fibers of dysfunction that had for many years bound her, a secure bridge to the present. More than anything, she wanted to feel safe. Mostly, she was but, shadows of the past could on occasion drag her back to that old dungeon of self-abuse and doubt, making her believe all over again that love did not matter and M_ would not return to her.

She was frustrated with the worries and stabbing pains she was trying to wrestle down- the kinds of thoughts that made it impossible to write, or were, perhaps just the weighted guilt she'd stunted herself on. That great career-making novel swirled daily in her head and her words breathed fire and wrought iron and made love from madness and were utterly trapped inside her; she just could not bring herself to cast some truths into the eternity of the written word. She tried and worked so hard at it, but, was she really over taking things personally? feeling utterly responsible? Rule number one of her agreements, and she struggled with it still.

Talks with her sister lately had served to unleash a long tucked-away ember of anger that she hadn't felt burning in over fifteen years. Hearing real-time stories of recent events seemed to wash the present in living, vivid color, layering with uncanny fluidity the stark and tearfully horrifying water-colored memories of her childhood.

Seeing their fathers' rage in full effect-chasing down a frightened animal; a family pet, mind you-watching him choke or in some other vile way torment the poor thing stung at her heart with that same pleading, helpless rage, remembering at once that she, herself, had committed a similar scene for which she nearly daily prayed and fretted, and even now, though she knew it was a learned behavior to which cycle she had dedicated

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