She

She was once beautiful, confident. She never loved her self but she had had years of life where she had managed to be in agreement with herself, to live and not to regret. She had loved so hard and fallen so hard when the love had left her broken and shattered on the ground. She cried rivers when the child she had not been expecting arrived and then left when the milk she provided wasn’t enough anymore and the money for food was non-existent. She climbed mountains and, weathered by storms she came through the range stronger and at peace with her past. Alone she became something she could live with. It wasn't perfect, she had the knowledge to realise that she would never be perfect. But there was peace and there was hope for the future. The hope faded when fakes swept into her life and back out taking what they wanted of her with them and leaving a smaller woman behind. Her second child was a blessing and she worked and lived for the child, who grew strong and was loved. The child gave love in return. But it was so hard to not ask too much, too not rely too much on someone who couldn't cope with it. And she knows it was her fault that she lost this child too. Not so soon and by a choice not force, but none the less the child left, fell in love, found her life, began her own family which was as close to perfect as she had ever thought something could get. But she wasn't allowed to see her grandchildren for too long, her drinking was a problem and it shouldn't be allowed around the children. She knew it was only logical. She should change, should follow the advice to find a passion again, find a life, and find some hope. Stop dragging everyone else down, stop being a burden. But she was getting old now, at 40, and had been this way for too many years to change. Her heart had broken too many times and needed respite from her brain picking at it, every now and again.



She shuffled one foot closer to the edge and leaned over the side looking to the road below her. It was quiet, as it normally was this time of night. It was a small town and everyone not in bed had left it for somewhere better to spend their evening. She didn't think she had had that much to drink tonight, only a bottle with dinner. Or was it two…and she had skipped the dinner. Maybe it was the height rather than the drink that was making the lines on the road curve and slither like a snake making a dash along the middle of the road. She never had been good with heights so maybe it was the reason the street lights where too bright and blended together creating a warm white blanket spread below her to catch her when she fell. She stepped the other foot to join the first, toes hanging over the edge and spread her arms, closing her eyes and tilting her head back as her arms turned into wings, blue feathers sprouting all around them. She had always loved the colour blue, calming and pale. She lifted her heels from the wall of the Madison and Norris law firm office building and rocked forwards onto the balls of her feet  so that she was standing momentarily on thin air, her wings holding her up. She had worked in this building once, just after struggling her way threw a year of minimal GCSE’s. Her first child’s father had been the one to hire her, praising her way with the clients and talent for noticing the little details. He had been the one to fire her too, saying that a busy office was no place for a pregnant woman and nor was his apartment, or the coffee shop he regulared.  She saw his face first, in that moment as she hovered above the blanket of light hiding the concrete below. But she pushed it away, violently, and as she did she dislodged the illusion and she remembered that she didn't have wings, and that these where her last moments. So she pictured her babies, there laughing faces and arms reaching for her. They had needed her, loved her, but she hadn't been good enough even for them. Love wasn't enough, and it didn't make the world go round. So she fell into the blanket which ripped under her weight and dropped her to the ground where she lay until morning, resting peacefully and unaware of the ache she left behind in the hearts of the people who loved her. And unaware of the loneliness and desperation of the daughter who was alone in the world searching for the person who had given her life and praying that when she found her she would find the love that she known in her first years was waiting for her return and would stretch to her own unborn baby whom she had loved since the moment she had known about her. But who she knew she wouldn't be able to care for alone.



Had her bus not gotten a flat tire and been delayed overnight, had she arrived a day earlier, maybe they could have saved each other. Maybe love would have been enough and would have spun their world, if they had held out hope of it a little longer.