The Longest Sentance.

Dreadfully long ago (longer than I care to remember), a woman lived in a small brick house missing mortar, a stable foundation, and paint on the walls--literally crumbling beneath her feet, which were in the same shape as the house, painted blue by the cold and red from sores, the only color that her trembling skin showed, passing the days by in a semi-lucid state of numb disbelief, but living in this house was her one spark of freedom, a quiet girls rebellion against a world who only saw another nameless face in that endless crowd, for without distinguishing features, or anything remarkable about her family name, she was as good as invisible, but not so in this house, pathetic as it was in all it’s unremarkable grace, for that broken woman felt a strange bond to it, almost as if its beaten structure was her own; living in this house, eating stale crumbs and tasteless water for food, sleeping on an ancient mattress, covered in stains, and sagging beneath any amount of weight, she would watch the fireplace for hours, a sorry looking shape protruding from the side of the wall, looking like a broken nose that never properly healed, smoke pouring out of it in gentle waves of listless gray that carried her far away from her body, bruised, pale, and painfully thin even for a dancer, which she had once been, away from her once glowing smile and shining eyes, for the only times those eyes shone now was for drastically different reasons, terrors that crept up in the still of night and the glare of day to claw at her failing senses and drag her trembling mind back into the convoluted shadows of the past, she would float away from all of this—time passing by without her, so sorry was her state that the world itself passed her by, but the only place she could go was the past, and that was a dark place, full of half forgotten memories, flashes of pain, sorrow, and the tantalizingly glimpse of happiness she once saw, afraid to return to the present, and even more afraid that she would stay in those torturous memories for ever, afraid that she would pass by a cracked mirror, see her sunken eyes and colorless face, the premature lines carved into it, and realize that the mirror was fine, it was she who was broken, it was her foundation that was eaten away and disintegrating by the day, blowing away with the wind, so scattered and scarred that she would hardly exist any longer, another bothersome piece of lint on a coat—before being pulled sharply back into the present, ripped from one darkness to another, tossing around on the stormy sea that had become her life, and continue to stare at the curling smoke, fickle thing that it was, always out of reach, as tangible as the moon beams falling through the window, a window that I passed by every day, all the while ago, uncurious about its owner, a trickle of smoke always pouring out of the chimney—except for the day I stopped, which was when I saw through that dirty, cracking window, a shape huddled by the fire, slumped against the wall next to it, listless, pale, and barely moving, and before I knew it I was drawn through the door, to watch that woman, small and broken, turn the most haunted eyes I’d ever seen upon me, smoke curling from her own white-blue lips, a dress hanging off her boney frame, before she parted her lips, and whispered in a hoarse, windy voice the beginning of a poem I knew well, “Thank Heaven! the crisis- /The danger is past, /And the lingering illness / Is over at last- /And the fever called "Living" /Is conquered at last.” smiled a faint, sad smile, a final breath of smoky air leaving her mouth before those unforgettable eyes of her glazed over, closed, and her cracked hand fell from the wall to rest limply across her chest—and I knew with every thread of my being that her lost soul and broken mind had once housed a brilliance so bright, it had blinded her from life’s true path, and made her an archer of her own life.