(Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marley, Mary Cassatt, 1880)

Playing Chess With Lucifer

I wonder what you see

The face that once you looked

Lines of time, pallor of age

A young woman that no longer exists

I see it, saddened by my own loss

Cringing at what will never come again

Pained by God’s cruelty

Or is it Lucifer…who knows?

How wasted it was, never reaching out, never acting upon what could have been

Do you judge me the way I judge myself?

Do you regret what I regret?

I remember the man you once were

The man you still are

More than you could imagine to be

I see that…I see you, hidden in the depths of your making

An image of what you were supposed to become

Living up to everyone’s expectations

But where are you now, lost in the walls of your own making?

Wanting desperately to flee, if only for a moment, to escape the weight of yourself

Are we all doomed to the solitude of despair?

I hear you, your call for reprieve

Your hidden desires flare in the compounds of your words

Letting me know you are still there, reaching towards me

Unable to take hold, but wanting all the same

If only for those few moments where our lives are unbound by time

My spirit rises, a joy that finds me in my darkness

And I wonder…I wonder what you see