by Nadine Sellers

Created on: November 23, 2009   Last Updated: November 24, 2009

She donated her soul to grief, an offering to separation.

The act, the deed of tearing asunder, mutual misery.

She inhaled power and exhaled meekness

as her mother had breathed submission and

fumed out anger .

Woman spent, she listened to muscles,

weak under salty skin.

Just as her mother had raged and cried,

she allowed resentment to carve silent tracks

along her bent spine, staring at the ground

slowly vanquishing failed hopes and poor choices.

Words, shards of jagged emotion

cut red scars into the flesh denied.

No blood visible, purity a burden,

she wallowed in the drowning stream

of a consciousness apart.

Would a hand caress a rounded shoulder.

She curled into herself to watch a life go by.

Would melancholy translate profound pain.

She curled onto the years, a memory away.

She donated her soul to sadness,

a gift of shame without merit,

the act, the deed, to tear misery from its roots.

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