Her

I felt her pain. Her anguish her turmoil. She must have been around 40 perhaps younger but…she looked haggard, life had caught her unaware, suddenly one morning, one fine Monday morning just like any other, she finally realized it. Her eyes, o god the eyes, swimming with unshed salty tears. Eyes which once shone with vitality, now sombre and distant. Observing nothing but retaining everything. Clothes, no ,very nearly rags, unkempt, greasy snail like even, I knew she knew that I knew and she squirmed deep into the seat, trying desperately to wriggle deeper into the solace of her soul. Attempting to reach for that last remaining bastion of relief where life was bearable. If you look, I mean really look at humanity, clandestinely, candid, you can read their story, like a gypsy reading a drunken fairgoers palm, you can read, you can see and sometimes if the emotions are strong enough you can feel. She was loved once, venerated even but now…well now she was detested, not by humanity but by herself, her own self loathing destroying her from within, deep within her murky filthy soul. A parasite existed, eating her, devouring her from inside. Was it love? Love usually is the biggest annihilator, the bitterest sensation, the oxymoron of all emotions. Love can bring so much happiness but in the same breath can bring so much mind numbing pain. Why should that be permitted? Why infest someone with that sort of strife. Love eh, images of cupid and Valentine ’s Day, chocolates and doorsteps goodbyes, cosy winter nights and long summer days.But this utopia could never endure. Drifting unaware toward the inevitable conclusion of the light side, of the bright side, only to be met headlong, travelling a million miles an hour toward the hate, the opposite side of the coin.    

She stared longingly through the finger smeared glass as we travelled uncomfortably toward our respective destinations, discarded crisps wrappers strewn at our feet. Carelessly thrown toward the floor by local schoolchildren as they made this trip an hour or so before. Schoolchildren unaware of the sadness, still innocent in the playground of childhood, protected by an unwritten law which states that real anguish the anguish of her, of you of me, be withheld for the time being. Stored away in the locked vault, of the `mature` mind.  It has always been there but it was kept under lock and key, but life dictates when that padlock should finally be thrown open. A Socratic emotion never learned but always there, just waiting on the bolt to slip and permit the midwife of the mind to bring it forth, give it life and unleash it into the soul.