Shattered Time 

Shattered stained glass windows mixed in the wreckage of a life obscured.When carnage and shreds of the sacred lie intermingled in the ashes of a child’s room.

She turns her head to look away.

Eyes tearless with the sameness of the profane mundane.

Ragamuffin princess, locked away, locked out.

No finger can quite hit the discordant note, not even, especially not her own.

She lifts her gaze to glance away,

Still dry-eyed, dancing to the rhythm of the profane mundane.

Graze it from the side, tell it slant, so it doesn’t hit too painfully.

But now, reality shifts as imperceptibly as it hit,

the hologram has vanished, leaving shimmers and whispers, punctuated by shame.

She stares too hard into the mirror and disappears just as her fingertips graze the mirage of truth.

The elusive note, the shimmering hologram, the millions of shattered pieces piercing her hands as she gathers them,

As if they would cleanse her of her shame,

As if her shredded skin would atone for the wounds of each tiny piercing splinter of brilliant glass.

Puzzles that can’t be solved.

Justice that won’t be served.

Questions that go to the grave.

The obscured, fun-house decades remain in the ever-shifting shadows.

And she drops the shards that maim her tattered hands and broken heart.

Like a shadowy rainbow cascade, they assault the floor until she rests,

Lifts her bloodied now empty hands,

And trusts her past to the keeping of the only One who can actually grasp and redeem the fullness of her time.