A Distortion of the Mind's-Eye

​     She sits in a room lined with lead-glassed windows; sunlight seeps through in kaleidoscope shafts that puddle on the floor while dust motes dismount like olympic gymnasts as she sighs.  Memories that were once light grow ponderous as reality beckons and damns distortion and wishful thinking.  The conversation is as sharp as a slap, and births gratitude that she is finally free.  Those saccharine, sun-shined memories are cast back into shadows where they belong with other horrors of real-life that are played out as a dirge of sadness and relief carries moments of past back into the present.  The distorted view through love-sickened, rose-colored glasses ends in light and the freedom of leaving behind.  In that light, the negativity was brought into full view, so naked.  Obscene that she had never seen it, clothed in false niceties and temporary words.  Perhaps the goodness never even existed and it was all illusion and wishful thinking.  The other side of that dark coin, was in fact, identical to its obverse: darkness matching darkness in a bet she could never win no matter the times the coin was tossed up, up, up.  Her mind is flooded simultaneously in rancor and relief. 
     Memories once so fair now lack any hope of redemption and the desire for change is surrendered.  As she lifts her hand in accusation, the dust of Fae twirling once more on broken sunbeams, there is acknowledgment in the shadow cast the one finger points backward, aiming at her own soul.  
     Discoveries cannot be ignored by the rational, evolved heart, just as challenges to the Self cannot stand ignored.  She nods in gratitude and lowers her arm; the shadow recedes, the light prevails.  The cloudiness and futility of maudlin retrospection grows less distinct as her inward-looking reflection gazes back, and overcomes the limitations in triumph.

​© Regina J McMurray 2016