Cursed

     No one knew when he stopped loving the old white-haired woman, but everyone knew she deserved better.  All she ever wanted was to be loved and to tirelessly serve those who loved her and those she loved.  He, however, with determination and condescension, isolated her from her past and present and devalued her worth.  He alienated and damaged her relationships and offered nothing in return but empty psalms and irrelevant proverbs. He never offered any apology because he was never sorry and used wicked truth as his justification. His children fled and left her at his mercy, which was worse than damnation.

     She cried at night in her sleep because he was there and she cried in the day because he was gone. Thin phone calls to small neighbors and shallow children gave her exaggerated hope and let her deny the destruction of the fairy-tale of her life. Sometimes she prayed frail petitions to God, asking for explanations and comfort. She would pretend that He heard her and she would sing her hymns by rote and mumble the empty promises, refusing to see that her God was going to let her rot, letting her feel the slow dismantling of her nerves, her thoughts, her dreams, her faith, her hope. Jesus loves me, this I know.


     She clung to her mantra that she still loved the old man who did not love her.  But in the grey mornings when he lectured her from The Book and in the greyer evenings when he ignored her in his dozy readings, she knew that she did not. Those flitting acknowledgements terrified her as she stuffed them away. She knew that if she cracked that door open, the sunlight of honesty would flood in and she would disappear.

     She never believed that this would be her life.  She wanted him to save her, but he fancied himself in love with another. Another he wanted at the old woman's expense.  He would not even extend her the courtesy of deceit.  The weight pushed through her shoulders like a horse-collar. Like a whore-caller. The old woman became just another rag that he dragged around behind him, scraped and wounded, but too afraid and too sad and too predisposed to let go.  She had the despairing resolve and tenacity of the Dust Bowl share-cropper in her spirit, but it was not enough to pull her out of her sorrow and loneliness.  It was only sufficient to keep her from surrendering when she was given opportunities in alien blue hospital rooms.

     And he will not let up, even in face of the decades she gave him. Soon she will stop going out. She will just lie there in bed. Her face will start to set. Her hands will start to fold.  And one day the dry fig of her heart will stop its beating.

Thanks to the imagery of The Curse by Josh Ritter (Check out my audio clip to see his video).