Beauty in woes

 

My lips feel so dry I taste the broken blisters peeling and bursting. My dehydrated skin begs for mercy from the incessant sun. Exhaustion renders me helpless. Defeat has been carved out in perfection, on my forehead by the unrelenting sunrays. I have become the ultimate prey for the hovering vultures circling and ebbing around the intended feast.

 

“Have we been shipwrecked?” I ponder to myself.

 

Dragon lies sprawled out next to me. Beaten into fragility and despair. She can barely move. Weakness holding her captive.

 

Slowly dry fragments of memories make their presence known. Splinter and distorted they torture my mind. Before I lived safely cocooned, in the confines of the glass jar. Now it appears I have been spat out into a desolate desert with Dragon and death my closest companions.

 

Beneath us the sand grains from a vortex of strong pull towards the jam jar. I can hear the jars faint call, “come my beloved, you will be safe in my confines.” The most beautiful music reaches my ears, its harmony so sweet and succulent like water on my blistered lips. I can taste the comfort and feel the warmth, of its embrace slowly lifting me up, escorting me into the hourglass’s safety net.

 

Sand grains topple my feet into the opening of the hourglass. The hole is so small and majestically crafted. Relief fills my soul. I have tried so hard to live outside my comfort zone. It took everything I had to break free. Yet all it left me was infinitely defeated.

 

A rope weaves and clutches around my wrists, Dragon is tussled up too. Strong sturdy strength pulls us out of the sandy vortex. To tired to fight, tears sting my burnt cheeks. “Please no” I scream I cannot fight the jar anymore and I do not want to. It takes too much to step out in faith, let me just go back and relish my defeat.

 

Cool droplets wash like waves over my broken lips. The coolness refreshes my soul and revives a glimmer of energy hidden in my body somewhere. Cricket folds my face lovingly in her little hands, “Mom what are you doing? Open your eyes and look at the world around you.”

 

Irritated and completely beyond despair I will my eyes to open. The first blurry images register slowly in my mind. What I see is unfathomable. Infront of me stands my little Bull dancing in crashing waves of water. Wherever he delightfully tramples little sprouts of hope and joy bloom, into delicate beauty. Dragon freed and unbound glitters in sparkling rays, water and glorious fish delighting in her joy.

 

Behind me the jar stands alone and desolate. Her emptiness a sad crevice to the testimony of captivity. Embarrassed by her duplicity she retreats into oblivion…