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... a talented and beautiful young woman discovered
that she had developed a rare, chronic, incurable, degenerative,
and last but not least, debilitating brain disorder?

what if she denied it and hated it and fought with it
to the nth degree with every minute hour and day
even as it progressed with every week month and year

what if it caused her to abandon her musical career her life
or [as she felt] more accurately perhaps,
caused her musical colleagues
to abandon her

how would she perceive herself?
who would she be?

she is lost

how would she survive nursing the hate?
how could her family and friends open the gate?

what would she think that she wanted?
more than anything anything at all in the whole wide world?

what if she found a promise of 'better - almost well'
and opened it up to find only 'bitter - almost hell'

what if she met a group of people with the same disorder
what if some of them talked of acceptance and dreamed of hope
what if some of them did not hate her monster

like she does

would she hate them?
would she think them fools?
would she appoint herself the slayer of the dream dragon?
or the arbiter and comptroller and side-swiper of happy talk?
the player of discordant music so loud and so off key as to drown out
all of their pitiful and useless parodies of melody?

what would she do with all that hate
feeding on its own frenzy
living its own life
without her

she is lost

only in her own dream of her own making, that's all
time to wake up, rise 'n' shine, sun's out
what if it's a beautiful morning

it always is





janet paterson
53 now / 41 dx / 37 onset
613 256 8340 / PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada
visit my website "a new voice" at: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"