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Still Life


by Judith A. Lawrence


There is a scene in a movie

where the heroine runs away to a shore motel

for a few days respite,

no television, phone, newspaper, humans,

just the sound of waves lapping on the shore

as she drifts in and out of sleep wrapped in white sheets,

the salt water infused in the air she breathes.

 

The woman leaves behind home, husband, children,

floating between what's real and imagined,
she succumbs to the dark side for a time,

eventually returning a bit damaged but withstanding.

 

Yet it seemed to me this creature
was ill-fitted to her life from the start.

She was a moon dancer, keeper of secrets,

a spinner of tales, an adventurer, a dreamer,

stifled by the confines of a June Cleaver life.

 

I envied her brief episode to the far shore,

wanted her to linger,
to become a woman made of

ocean, sand, salt and air,

eyes of ocean green washed pebbles,

hair of flaxen seaweed sweeping behind her

erasing footsteps so none could find her.

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