Paying the Toll

[Leylow]

(Let me preface this by saying -- this is not an auto-biography. It's a poem I wrote trying to stay in the rhyming pattern. It took on a life of its own as I wrote.)

The five o’clock queue moves hurriedly to the doors;
Laughter and determination carries each away.
Alone, she slips silently apart from the cackling corps.
She’s a distorted illusion, an actor in a shadow play.
It’s not the life she dreamed, schemed or planned
But the one that conspired with past mistakes
To lay hold of her uncultivated promised land
And leave her solitary, afraid, misplaced.
She trudges down the path, lost in tumbling thoughts
That dwell on what-ifs, should-haves and loss.
Her future forsaken by memories tied in strangle knots
That have faded from golden into doleful dross.
She walks to the bus stop, boards the blue line,
Avoids eye contact with her fellow raucous riders.
Her destination, the tiny house beside the scotch pine
They once shared, in love, secluded from outsiders.
Another solitary night, locked behind dirty windows,
And three deadbolts slid home to keep out the world.
She sits in the darkness in silent commune with shadows.
Any joy she once felt, blocked, put away, furled.
Tomorrow’s another day, she remembers her mother’s claim.
She knows there is no tomorrow, just the repeating life
Where days blend one into the other, no change, the same;
Where reality slices dreams with the skill of a surgeon’s knife.
Sleep eludes, then offers intermittent rest in the gloom
Until daylight breaks through the dusty, tattered curtain.
She replays the routine, slides into the masquerade costume,
Walks to the bus stop, heavy with her self-imposed burden.
No one sees her now, they have forsaken efforts to include.
Her isolation offers no true comfort, no balm for her soul,
There’s only her acceptance of years of sadness accrued
In payment for love’s betrayal, the ultimate journey’s toll.

[Moushka]

Like endless days. I enjoyed reading this.

[Leylow]

Thank you. I was feeling a bit sad because my husband had been on the road for a couple of weeks. I took advantage of the mood and wrote. I haven't written anything in ages. It felt good to write again.