Unreachable Love
Home was no longer her home.
Thoughts of survival clouded her future.
She dragged the boulder tied to her feet,
each reluctance etched upon her face.
She walked through the dark night,
blending her body with a silhouette.
Together they moved, hiding her from her past,
exposing her to a blurred tomorrow—
of uncertainty, hopelessness, and danger.
The strangeness of his accent carried her beyond mountains~
where birds croaked like frogs seeking mates.
“Why waste this beauty in the cold?”
She wondered if beauty had finally found her face.
No one had ever used that word
to clothe her eighteen years of ugliness.
Perhaps he knew she was new to the street, but she cared less.
To be called beautiful was relief enough.
Years of grief dissolved in a second.
She smiled—transient, delicately fragile—
as joy briefly veiled the tears
that darkness hid from him.
He took her home.
Suddenly, home became beautiful—
not rotten wood, not smelly gutters.
She met his youngest child first—her age mate,
then two others, older by years.
Disappointment pricked her heart:
she could not lie upon his chest,
could not whisper darling—
a word stolen from her lips twenty-five years earlier
by a stranger who now calls her “daughter.”
Yet the word still burned like an ember on her tongue.
She longed to taste it,
but she knew it would be bitter.
She loved this kind stranger—
but her love for him remained
u n r e a c h a b l e.
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