brittle

It broke.

Like a fragile leaf on the last day of autumn.  Barely touched.  Dissolved.

I've been trying to hold it together.  All the swirling pieces, but my arms don't have enough span to catch them before they're caught in the wind.

I have this ability.  It is, hands down, my most dangerous, detrimental, and self-preserving skill.  To detach.

Physically, I feel it happen.

Rise.  Pause -- in fear, almost always.  Breathe deep and push it deeper.  Straighten shoulders and carry on.  Feeling hinders.  Encumbers.  Weakens.

The lie has permeated me.

But it failed me.  This mechanism.  There was an error in operation.  With one memory, spoken.  An unimportant but deeply personal fact, remembered.  And reality ricocheted off the ceiling, landing in my chest.

Where the tears are.

Laying on my side, burying myself deep, trying to find the safe, numb place I've built.  The tear slowly slid down my cheek.

Damn.

The sunrise met my face, bleeding through the closely built houses, in between the power lines.  Eye on the horizon, Anna.  Keep your eyes there.

My brittle self is maneuvering cautiously today.  One ill-timed touch and I will crumble.

-

Dreams fall heavy on my sleeping.  Dreams, not terrifying, but fearful.  Causing me to start, jolt, and roll over... unsure of anything.

There, I slept peacefully.  Woke up to the quiet light of morning and sinking body under the sheets.  I had not fallen backwards into the dreams.  It is that comfort that pulls my heart.

But a dream was sent to another last night.  While I was fighting the breaking.  While I was battling all feeling.  A dream was sent to her.  A foreshadowing.  A most hopeful premonition.  She doesn't know me yet.  Never seen my face.  But I was there -- in her dream.  On the streets in Atlanta.  Playing with children I haven't even met yet.

Deep is calling.  Hope is crooning my name.  And the opposition I am facing is not of Him.

In my brittleness, I am sitting very still.  Tear still lingering in the corner of my eye.