Well I finished early cos I HAVE GOT to figure out what I'll be writing about for my 10-page short story. Good Lord. What have I done?
Little background on this: I've written it, not just for class but also as a gift to my family. My grandparents passed away a few years ago. They had a beautiful love story. They married young, worked their way to a comfortable life and were devoted to each other for nearly 70 years. My gran had Alzheimer's and was in a home for many years. It destroyed my granddad to watch her but every other day he rode the bus to see her. A few days before my gran died of some sort of ism, my granddad had taken ill. When we received the news of my gran's collapse and subsequent death we flew to Alabama and prepared to tell granddad the bad news. But before I even got to the facility where he was, granddad died. We all decided it was because somehow he must have known gran wasn't around anymore. He had no reason to wait. He never wanted her to be alone. So, within 3 days we lost them both. To me, that is more beautiful than any sonnet or any starcrossed love. So... there ya go.
As yet untitled poem 3 for class
A silvery blue Ford grinds its brakes
stopping in front of an old farm house.
A young woman is in the passenger seat.
She’s so young, a girl.
Her bright eyes shine in the dark.
The light bounces off her hair as she
quivers -- excitement laced with dread.
She’s late for curfew.
“You belong to me now, and I say it’s okay.”
Sun-darkened, labor-worn hands enfold
her delicate white fingers.
His voice is husky with protectiveness.
Somehow this is enough to salve her fear.
The warmth of his roughened skin suffuses
slowly, reassures, assuages.
Her daddy wouldn’t like it
but she had already said yes.
In a small ceremony at the Methodist church
while the girl’s daddy looked on
her bright eyes shined and
tiny hands clutched a bunch of pink daisies.
The young man made good on a promise.
In front of God, daddy and everyone
he told her, “You belong to me now.”
The years reel on past,
her tiny hands have grown papery
his hair silvery blue.
Their children have married.
She tells her granddaughters,
who complained about not having Mtv,
about never having shoes as a kid,
their silvery blue Ford,
and when Co-Colas were special.
One warm dawn
it's bloody cold to realize
their life of comfort seems fractured and strained.
She can’t remember him anymore.
She can’t remember her self.
He says, to her, not quite reassuring himself,
“It’ll be okay, you belong to me.”
One day her fragmented broken brain can
no longer contain her.
She collapses in a heap
and stops moving.
We can’t tell him yet...
but somehow he already knows.
Three days later he finds her himself
at the end of a tunnel
bathed in blindingly bright warm light.
She is waiting there
and enfolds him in her waiting embrace
“You belong to me now,” she says.
In the unnatural quiet of a once full home
their granddaughters read her journal.
In gran’s spidery script
they read in wonder the story of the night
it all began
when he told her, “You belong to me now, and I say it’s okay.”
