The woman lost...to a man. Yes, of course she lost. But to a less competent man? Well, yes, that too. No surprise there.
But to an unfit human being! That was the surprise, the shock, the incredulous finale to a season of lies, untruths, disrespect, name calling--the worst aspect of naked aggression, of win-at-all-costs....
Happens all the time, and now it has happened again.
She contemplated just staying in bed, turning off the phone, the radio, the clock, shutting it all down, rolling over and dreaming. Dreams were her comfort, her hope, her possibility. Not real--she knew that....but then she asked herself, what really is real? It's all a dream, this life is all a dream, here today, gone tomorrow--the insignificance of everything, and the deep significance of the same everything in the one, jumbled basket.
~
Well, she sat up, finally sat up, just as a bus rumbled past...ah, the buses are still running, and then she saw a squirrel, who, as far as she knew, never listened to the news, saw the squirrel run to the end of a branch outside her window, bend it down almost to the ground before leaping off...and the branch snapped back.
Snapped back? Just a branch, but a living branch, a branch forever attached to the same trunk, snapped back, lives, snaps back and offers a path to any squirrel brave enough to run its length. The branch snaps back.
There's a lesson there, she thought. Something to know, to remember. Even a branch, a living branch, can snap back.
Well, so can I, so can we....with damage and scars, but we can snap back, one moment following another, we can snap back.
