Changes...Innocence Revisited

So many things she has buried deep. It was instinct then in order to survive. Lock it away and it can't hurt you, that was her survival. Put it where you cannot feel it and soon you can get through almost anything and appear to accept it. All good little soldiers knew that you had to conform, no matter what you see or feel you cannot appear to disagree.....

She ran out of the house,hopped on her bike and peddled...furiously...instinctively, onto the path that would take her to the far side of the post. They were moving again......

On she peddled, subconsciously heading to the one place she knew she had to be. "Her spot". She had taken few people there and only when she knew they would see it as she did. She told no one else about it just in case they might take it from her....

She slowed a bit now, feeling the calm that came over her when she knew she would soon be in a place where answers sometimes came to her.

The place she came to after she went to the hospital to see her favorite student teacher the day after he had been stabbed outside of her school...

The place she came to after her summer romance ended He was one of the few who knew of her place. It was where he kissed her passionately, where his hand, the first hand ever, had touched her breast...it was where she felt the first stirrings of the woman she might one day become...

She let the bike fall on it's side in the grass and walked away from it. She sat, hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth for a few minutes as she felt the calm settling in. She laid back in the grass looking into the sky, clouds puffy and white swirling into shapes and patterns. She watched, the first tear slid down to settle in her ear...
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She looked to one house and then to another. Inside each, a family doing what they normally did as they watched another day end. No one noticing that someone stood wondering if they had found what made them happy...

She was not sure what she expected life to be when he moved out. Almost 4 years later she was still trying to find her way. She wasn't lost, that would imply that she had no choices. No, the opposite was true, choices were many. So many boundaries were erased when she opened her mind to the possibilities. Still, she liked watching people move through the day doing things they probably did without considering there were other things out there to experience. She envied their security, a little....

She didn't mind that she was alone with her thoughts, she was used to being alone. During her childhood, where she moved every 18 months she learned to disappear into a world in her mind. Years of marriage where she was not encouraged to share or asked to be a part of the man she lived with for nearly 25 years, reinforced that she could be alone. Even when he touched her she was in that world. In that world, the man who touched her knew her soul and she his...

Where was this man? The one who would know her heart without words, the one she holds back for even now. Each new man she meets she looks to the eyes. So far he has not found his way to her. She will know him when she sees him, of this there is no doubt....

He would come up behind her now as she stood by the water, slide his hands around her and pull her into the shape of him. Resting his chin on her head he would feel her relax against him with a sigh. He would nuzzle her ear and whisper how well she fits in his arms, tell her how right it is that they have this place, this time to themselves. She would turn in his arms to face him, look into his eyes and know there was no other place he would rather be. The gate would open in her as she would reach to hold his face and place a gentle kiss on his warm soft lips. Hunger would reach through the tenderness, for both of them. There would be murmurs of love, of fire and forever. The sand would be their mattress, the cold forgotten in heat radiating from one to the other. Lit windows in the background would disappear, one at a time, into the darkness to leave them to give to each other....