She sat, gazing







quietly out






Seeing the soundless robins
The silent saplings
Through the inch-thick glass.

The window caught her reflection

Savoring it wistfully,
Throwing her velvet eyes back at her
But she paid no notice of her

Drawn face.

She pleaded, with her entire being, for
The frolicking birds
To somehow



Someway










Grant her inspiration
Until the ink would flow and idea
After sparkling idea would take flame

And consume her paper.
But the robins turned their glassy eyes
Away
Unseeing
Thoughts only on
Screaming beaks of babies
And troublesome thunder-heads

Above.
Focused so completely on the now
They missed, painfully missed,
The hopes
Dreams
Inspirations
And flew on,
Beating their silky, glossy feathers
Oblivious.
She turned slowly away,
Her page only filled
Halfway.
Her story deflating
A decade old, withered balloon
Losing the life, air,
That made it be.
Her eyes filled with tears
Made of frustration


Anger



Sadness
And, as the deep, heart-wrung emotions
Flowed down her cheeks,


She knew within that some were born of another
Dark cloud
Overshadowing her life.
She had attempted to scatter
The oppressive burden with a beautiful,
Joy-imbued tale,
Yet, as the inspiration left her,
Her sorrow remained buried in her soul.

Then
She felt a tiny nothing of a
Wispy dream
So microscopic she nearly missed the idea, the life-changing idea.
She took hold of the nothing, the scattered particles of thought,
And, ever so carefully,
Stitched them together until she held,
In her mind, a square of brilliant
Fabric.
Moving with the speed of the robins outside, she took the fabric and
Clenched it tightly.

Feverishly scribbling,
She worked through the grasping night


Until







The sun shot scarlet, violet, indigo
Rays, filling the air
Giving it new life

She had given her soul
Her entire heart
Every thought
To this black and white page.
Her woes,


Her clouds,





Her silent tears
Her heart-wrenching despairs
Had poured willingly into the paper.
She lifted the creamy pale window of her life
Reverently
Holding her Self.
She opened the stained door, the door she had once pounded in grief,
Each peel,

Scratch,


Creak,
Known to those keen ears
And piercing, emotion-belying
Eyes.
Giving it up to her father
She almost let the tumultuous tears fall
Like jewels slipping
Out of the shocked grasp of a miser,
But she clenched her hand

And let her life pass to the hands of another.


He read deliberately, devoting on each word
Of his daughter’s, glancing up
Every so often
To bestow her a
Compassionate smile,
A knowing glance of all the pain
That had layer upon
Layer of phony smiles and
“I’m all right”s.
Each smile
Peeled, painfully, back a layer
Until, at last, when he embraced her
She cried
Tears
Washing over

Her mutilated heart

Healing with an intensity
She had never known before.
She did not know that
Some of those glistening
Pearls were not her own
As they slipped through the defenses
Of her father’s heart,
Healing the stately father
And
The daughter.