Trina Love has been reading and writing since kindergarten, but developed her writing skills at Georgia State University with a Bachelor of Art in Advanced Writing and Rhetoric. She’s been a technical writer and editor for more than 18 years, writing technical manuals, online help, and web content for fortune 500 companies. She writes fantasy fiction, and her stories have won contests at the Decatur Book Festival and SCAD’s Just Write it competition.
That was Then, This is Now
It punctured my thoughts like shattered glass.
Making holes for my soul to slip through.
Particles, specks of me landed in several directions.
Scattered, broken.
That was then.
Eventually I found the pieces of me
that I’d lost underneath an umbrella of failed attempts.
The remnants of my spirit that slipped away snuck back into me
one evening when the sun and the moon simultaneously
bathed the sky.
I sucked my desires, needs, and wants inside.
Silence.
A brown leaf falls. The only one left on the tree.
The other leaves had turned, bursts of boisterous yellow, ubiquitous orange, and resilient reds.
Alive. They crowd the brown leaf out, closing their ears to his broken chords.
The lone leaf sails in the wind, drifting, drifting, reaching the ground.
It stays. This is now.
I stand in a meadow full of weeping willows
their branches heavy with blooms. The wind
steals some away each time it marches through.
The blooms whirl around me, covering me, surrounding me.
Soon there are enough enveloping me. I too am lifted, soaring through the meadow
like a kite on a string. Happy. Free. Hopeful.
He pulls the string. Steers me back down to the cold, hard earth
with so much turbulence that I am dismembered.
I see parts of me floating away on the stem of blooms,
hiding in the folds of the weeping willows.
That was then. This is now.
I was a plastic doll. Someone else formed me, changing my
hair, clothes, words, and actions to suit them. I am thoughtless.
Pulling me off the shelf. Change. Putting me back on the shelf. Adjust.
That was then.
Still my heart bled at the end of my beginning in one surly summer.
Standing in the closet we once shared. The earth oil fragrance he wore still
stinging the air. Empty hangers in the closet. Cool sheets next to me at night.
Speaking into the air. Echoes.
No response.
Brunch. Dinner. A table for one. Brows lifted.
Bleak eyes. Hollow heart. Singular, not plural.
I learned the posture of being one after six years of being two.
Part of the birthing process.
That was then.
Peeking from underneath an unwanted shield, I extend my arms.
Daringly unfolding my legs and stretching,
I step out of the shade.
The sun skates across my face;
its warmth infiltrates my veins. My heart smiles.
My soul returns.
I can speak. I can feel. I can think. For me.
This is now.
HONEYCOMB LITERARY 