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Second Chances
The vexed thought of doubt.
A faint rouge tinting the surface of her face,
Complementing the veins sitting just beneath it.
Her mind tedious with its own complex thoughts,
Storing them away
As a criminal would hide the evidence of his own crime.
Her kryptonite is uncertainty, insecurely standing up in the middle of a hushed class to utter her individual opinion that could end in either praise or humiliation.
Uniform to how the moment after sending an unsure message containing cascades of outcomes
to
the
Right
Person
releases an avalanche of emotions that plunges into the depths of her stomach
Sickening her as she waits for the unknown reply.
Yet even with a mind as bright as the lamp the tiny geometrid is drawn to,
She can’t help but always feel helpless to her own self.
Ill-tempered, hastening away from what she has done
Or hasn’t done.
Shoes squelching across the aged dirt road, avoiding the cars hissing past,
Creating hundreds of detailed imprints of the molar shaped undersides of her shoes through the mud
To somewhere she hasn’t visited before.
Physically
The graves of her great-grandfather and great-grandmother
maybe, strategically placed right beside the other as if they had never left, as if they were still together.
Mentally
Where love originated, where her emotions ran wild and free in their own pastures without her conscious as their shepherd to prevent mistakes, to fend off the possibility of her having
Only
One
Chance
To make things right.
She then returns to reality; her Monday at the beginning of the always seemingly endless week
and she is still running.
She turns her head to the right, just a 7-11, the aroma of old, over-cooked, greasy foods filling the air.
She turns her head to the left
An abandoned country road, lit only by the green, red, and orange blinking light of the buzzing 7-11 sign,
On
Buzz.
Off
Buzz.
Then she sees it.
An unperturbed grove of apple trees just across the way
noticeable from the light of the full moon reflecting off of the apples dangling from them
She meanders through the winding paths of trees, picking off an apple as she walks
biting into it
Squinching her eyes and face as the sweet juice fills her mouth
Carefully avoiding the incessantly buzzing hives of bees
Hiding in the shadows of the trees, tiered over one another.
One bee bumbles over to her, smoothly arriving to its destination
That seemed to be the crook in her arm.
It stings her, leaving a small red dot to signify the rush of pain
Sprinting fast through her
Just succeeding past the finish line.
She watches the wings start to unwrap from the bee’s body,
The bee flowing effortlessly to the ground,
Dead.
This is the moment she realizes the privilege of being human,
Being able to begin again after one mistake
one doubt
one error.
That there is no worry about foreign ideas and opinions in class
Opprobrious responses from that right person
Escaped and unrestrained emotions.
For the bees have one chance, and we do not,
We possess infinite chances.
So she turned around,
Left the grove,
And walked home in the hopes of being able to wake up and start over.
Again and again.
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