Ravaged by time..

[AbuHossam]

‘The air carried a familiar stench of old things held captive. Lost to progress. Ravaged by time’…

‘Looking back, a young woman of 29-sandy hair and hazel eyes. She was slender and tall with a crass sense of humor. On her best days-a conversationalist. On her worst days-a recluse. More often than not, the bad days outnumbered the good. Had her Ma been right? Did the wrong daughter die?

That’s a hard thing to hear as a nine year old girl. She spent most of her life believing it should have been her. Ma made sure she didn’t forget. Cold and unyielding, her mother would have just as soon smothered her as hold her hand. Like the many dark spaces where decay routinely lurked-crypts, castles, caves. Or the hardened depths of her mother’s broken heart”…

‘Who will tell your story? Who will sing your song? When all those who knew the saga, are carried to Valhalla. If no one knows you ever lived, well then my dear, you never did’…

‘She was a troubled girl, certainly-intensely delicate. What a strange juxtaposition. Such a beautiful tragedy. Could such a thing exist? How could it not? Her eyes held mystery; darkness and despair, surely so, but also a glimpse of something powerful-something knowing. It was as if her gaze stretched beyond the reaches of time. And in her eyes, laid all the stories from lives not worth the living. Each a new start, all with the same horrid ending. Broken lights-every one. Never the chance to shine’…

‘Peppered fragrances of tobacco and livestock-heavy and robust-mingled dispassionately with the watered aromas of fish and muck wafting in from the harbor’…

© Barbara Rushing