by Five Sisters

Created on: July 26, 2009   Last Updated: August 03, 2009

Her bank account screamed "feed me" but she turned a deaf hear and rolled over ducking into a lair of pillows. Kicking, the meager numbers remaining in her balance hit the floor softly in a checkbook that had once held more weight. She felt like crying but was too drained. Her body curled in on itself until she rested in the form of a worn out cocoon. In that spot, in that shape, she slept - for hours.

She woke with a start from the light on her face and deduced she had slept through the night. She was amazed at this sheer accomplishment as sleep had been AWOL for days. Gathering herself in her dazed and wrinkled state, she shed the sticky covers and headed for the shower. Forgetting to disrobe she entered; soon her clothes clung to her like a second skin. She laughed - a little - before crying a lot and shed the extra layers like a snake.

On the brink of loosing her home, her car, and the little of what was left of her pride, she gazed down at her empty stomach and softly whispered "I'm sorry".

Mixtures of tears and soap gathered down near the drain and she stomped in the curve of the puddle forming in the middle. This made her feel better. This alone was miraculous.

Clean and clothed she headed out to her kitchen - the size of most peoples broom closet. She hunted down a tablespoon of peanut butter, three broken Ritz crackers and a sip worthy size of cold ginseng tea.

"Cheers to this day," she announced to the dish rack and the limp spider plant teetering on the sill. She watered it, another huge accomplishment and a move in the right direction. They were slowly starting to add up. Her frozen stupor, the one that had tethered her down for days, was slowly melting in the patch of sun she stood in. The warmth worked its magic on the points of her toes and worked its way up to her being. With great caution it started a soft yet palpable glow in all her vulnerable parts first. Feeling something, she sat down in the patch and asked for more.

There in the safety, in the heart of her matchbox kitchen, she went back over the range of events in her mind. Of how she was let go without so much as a warning on the Tuesday before her birthday, at noon. Of how a group of three handed out pink slips like party planning memos in a playful, zigzagging way circling back in on cubicles just as a sense of false relief set in. Behind her own tearful blur she watched as her fellow cohorts broke apart leaving only seven

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