Night was settling in. Echoes of the evening songs began to
bounce from the trees to the floor of the forest. But she sat.
Silent. Still.
She knew the flashlights would come shortly. The calls would
fill the empty spaces. But she would tuck in. Stay hidden from the reality that
waited beyond these branches and leaves.
She needed to hide.
She needed to lose herself and believe she hadn’t heard those words
today. She wanted to either leap into
the past or fast forward to a distant future. She didn’t want the journey these
circumstances placed on her today. Instead, she ran. She ran with fury. She ran
as far and deep as she could move.
But the silence was only there on the outside. Inside she
screamed. Inside the words shouted and condemned her.
Cancer. Tumor. Chemo. Radiation. They repeated and bounced from her heart, to
her stomach and to her head swarming like bees.
In the dark she settled to her knees. She collapsed and
lifted the dirt into her hands. A shift took place in her veins, like the path
that meandered in front of her. She clutched the soil and dropped lower to the
ground. The tears began to quench the soil below her. Her scream moved from
within her and out to the air. The sobs were muffled with words that tried to
spill out. She inhaled deeply, and exhaled with grief. Finally she sprawled to
the ground, exhausted from the race away from life and the emotion that pulled
her down.
On her back, she stared into the darkness. The questions
seem to be etched there into the sky. How can she fight this? Where would her
strength come from? But over, and over…why?
Why?
She searched the stars for answers. She listened to the wind
and the voices of night to see if they would whisper the answers that she
needed to hear.
But the only sound breaking the silence was her heartbeat.
The rhythm of it calmed her. A peace seemed to reach from every direction and
wrap itself around her. The pounding of her heart carried with it a fight, a
resolve. She wouldn’t surrender, she would meet this battle with a vengeance. She
would grasp her fingers around faith.
As if on cue came the voices and lights, revealing the soldiers
of love that would surround her and march beside in her in this battle. Their
arms carried her and she let go and allowed it.
From behind her she heard a chorus from the sounds of night,
“Fight, fight, fight.”
I am linking up with Write on Edge this week. My prompt is the photo above. It has been a while and I am feeling quite rusty! I do love feedback though.
