Sorrow's Fulfillment

Sorrow is the looming sadness brought forth by the past through a hole in the sky. An image within an image. A scene of a winter window a young girl with pigtails peers out of at nothing in particular but the last hanging ice-sculpture bowing the gutter above her. Her eyes are glassy like that lone remaining vestige of holiday warmth and heavy like the gravity wishing away all the promises made to visit again and keep in touch; the last gift to unwrap that her mischievous orange-headed cousin rips from her hands and hides away to be discovered some years later beneath the stairwell under a calico-checkered wool blanket, frayed, the day of her mother’s funeral, with no accompanying apologies made as her soft hazel eyes slowly fasten a river flush with sadness for her young adult form, slender and beautiful, to swim through next summers and all the way back to the house that stole her mother beaten to death by the cancerous sun, so she can watch once more the icicles gather; watch as they droop into puddles of sorrow’s fulfilment drip upon drip. A murky pond into which an orphan dives.