The Not Escape

She sits still, dressed in silk ribbon and fine lace, letting her life go by. She watches it as though from a distance, exchanges of words mere meaningless gestures playing out across a cotton screen. She views every indignity, every insult, every stray bit of shrapnel that impales her, passively.

This can't be happening to her! After all, Mother always told her that if she smiled wide and let it seem as though emotions didn't matter, that everyone would love her, love her deep indeed. So, she followed advice well meant off a cliff to discontent. Look where it has gotten her! Her heart has forgotten how to bleed, but wiped from its memory along with that is its ability to beat.

She sits alone, resplendent in her china finery. But what good are the clothes if SHE's the one no one bothers to see? She wonders what she's doing there, imagines all the ways things could change. All she'd have to do is get up, move, tear down that thin linen sheet. It wouldn't take much, just a twitch of motion, to set her free. And yet she doesn't move, transfixed by all the horrors she has 'seen'.

There's an exit door off to her left, the sign glowing poison-go green. That's another option for her - walk out that door, don't glance behind her, be reborn as someone new. She could escape - the movie that passes for her life, the binding clothes, that valley of discontent. Never again would she have to endure the bite of those emotions or those false 'I'm just fine' grins.

And yet she still sits there. Still, she doesn't move. Poor girl - she's been sitting there for so long, she's forgotten what it means to feel in truth.