Month: October 2009

Her dreams festered and died as she idly sat by.

Selling precious pieces of life to survive,

Hope bobbed futilely, drowning in a sea of insecurity and confusion.

Neglected fulfillment of empty promises,

Anguish,  isolation…

Her heart thrown into a cobweb clustered corner of a forsaken garage next to rusted screen doors and termite dregs.

Her voice more readily cold. Hiding welled tears and carpet stains.  Fear and apprehension. More than waiting, a void exists, a dark empty hole plunging to the depths of a putrid soul.  Each emotion swallowed scratches and claws as it crawls down.

Alone at daybreak.  Opening her eyes, she scans across the cluttered, claustrophobic paneled room.

The shabby, unkempt trailer she shares with a friend is located in Treasure Island.  Surrounded by prefab plastic and aluminum boxes, mostly inhabited by seniors in their twilight years waiting to die.

She’s haunted by the remnants of their life together.  She awakes expecting to see his sleeping face, close to hers, the dreams seem so real.

Aloneness tips the day into another struggle.  Her heart is as empty as the pillow next to hers that he used to share.

The wedding gown hanging desolate in closet dark is a disastrous  symbol of the love taken away. She’s still paying for the dissolved romance.

An evil thief stole her love, her heart and discarded it among the ruins of lost souls.

Superbowl Sunday, 1988

Phone rings,

I hear the phone but refuse to acknowledge until…

The line crackled and buzzed but her voice sounded through.  My heart pounds dangerously upon hearing the message on the deprecated mini-cassette answering machine owning her voice.

“Dave, this is your long lost love Lisa, Please call me…”

Eight years had passed since last we’d spoke.  I swore her off.  I vowed to never, NEVER, tangle with her again.

How did she get my number?  Why’d she call? Is she in trouble?  Why at this hour? My mind tumbles into a heap of scrap like the aftermath of a sloppy high-speed car accident.

I call back, busy…busy again,  wide awake now even after multiple superbowl brews, I contemplate giving up..but try calling one more time.

Busy signals and bad connections still existed in 1988, but this time she answers…

She had jarred my mom from deep sleep @ 4am to get my number.

We Spoke

She talked about her drug-related life this past year, in and out of rehabs and hospitals, she talked about her estranged husband and their 2  year old daughter.  She talked about her fiance, a navy grunt stationed in the Persian gulf, she alluded to a tryst with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and accused her psycho-analyst of getting her hooked on Xanax.  She talked about her mom and her friends in rehab and how “everybody love’s me down here”.

She talked, I listened.

She said she was an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and a model, but was on welfare at the moment.

“This is a great song!”, she said, referring to some metal song on her stereo.  She placed the phone receiver next to the speaker and sang along, word for word, as the source volume of the music distorted the phone line. She didn’t pick up the phone again until the song ended.

She told me she love me.  I told her I’d call her later that day.  Another good song came on, she turned up the stereo again and continued singing…I slowly, cautiously placed the phone receiver back on the hook, wondering what just happened.