Fragmented Truths

Fragmented Truths

1

Roses splashed across diamonds. They bleed, splay jagged trails on glistening sheets, and blur lines while clouds sported racing hot bolts. They cascaded over golden rays wearing the rage of scorned women.  Seeds of doubt plant themselves deep in insecure bandits set on harm. No matter how I tried to erase it from my mind the words only grew older and more pronounced. I held my pen tighter; my teeth clenched, and felt my pulse speed up.

Where had I gone wrong? All I ever wanted was to make friends and have just one source of communication outside my troubles, worries and woes. However, take just one person's disturbed morals and paranoia, combined it with a desperate need for attention and the end result was anything but pretty.

I straightened as pain flared down my spine. As I grimaced, slumped forward, and rest my forehead in my sweat slick palms I chewed my cheek. Sometimes wiping the slate clean and starting anew was the only solution to escape. Still the facts remained: I had become the target of jealousy and senseless hostility.

Again, the accusations seeped in my thought. Every aspect of my life had been called into question, twisted and fabricated. I wondered how anyone could ever believe such an idiotic set of notions, but a naive and impressionable intellect can be easily warped into accepting the most absurd misconceptions.  Truly bemused intentions served parliament; ambiguous and mysterious natures beseech those in power. Still, as time wore on, the ticking clock maddened warriors who refused to banish medieval chivalry.

As shades of sun cast across the globe, I sat ever so still at my desk, pen in hand and eyes drawn to the window. Where has love gone? It uses to sneak a whisper every time and again but now seemed shriveled by the barbaric judgments of old fashioned jealousy. I bowed my head, gently rays catching a patch of raven curls as they splashed across my shoulder.

I shifted my gaze to the piece of parchment and shivered. How was I supposed to compose words of encouragement and love when any moment the judgment would so shrewdly bestow upon me? I bit my lower lip and straightened.

Wherever you go there will often be jealousy, I told myself and nodded. No one can ever be happy truly if hate breeds in their hearts.  I dipped my pen in the ink bottle and began to scribble words across the blank page. Such a wonderful mixture of fragrance stimulated my senses and once more I forsake sorrow, set aside worry and proceeded to spin a tale only the imagination could harvest, for in creativity resides a world only the writer can manipulate and paint to suit his or her own artistic tastes.

I smiled. Yes, yet another novel on its way.

2

Horrors soared in the recess of my mind. They fumbled once but never twice and sometimes even paled in comparison to the burning emptiness swelling within me by each passing day. As I straightened my short body across the cot I groaned. My belly made similar sounds, but deeper and without end.

I reached, fingers withered and worn, for a tattered black book. Words faded and pages crinkled, I thumbed through to a piece of string. It lay settled in the deep crook where threads of clue splintered and frayed off. I read the passage underlined in pencil.

I will not be afraid.

If only it were true, but I was afraid. I was very afraid and every night I drew in breath believing it would be my last. My name was Mary, though I often was called different and by less of flattering names.  With tears rolling free across my cheeks, collecting in my hair and smelling of salt, I closed the book and stared upward at a series of pipes as they run along a low hanging boarded stretch. I licked the tears from my lips and sniffled.  As my mind shifted, it shifted again to a new crisis. How could I forget? I shook my head and shrugged. Was it possible a memory as that eluded me by pure coincidence or was something else behind it? I tried to regain focus, but a haze settled over me.