“The sadists come like lightening bolts, Sila!” Madge exclaims, a warning glistening from her eyes.
“Shut the fuck up, Madge.” Maude orders. “Leave her alone.”
But Sila knows. They are like lightening bolts, and they will flood her with their electricity, then leave her depleted. They will strip her skin, extract her emotions and bottle her love. She is open prey for the wild no matter where she is.
“It’s Angie.” Vennie says. “She attracts them like a moth to light. They become friend, then foe, lover, then liar, laughter then leaving. And we are ALL here to clean up the aftermath.”
the blame
Angie’s fragments
Sila a curled up caterpillar
Madge taunting
Maude doing damage control
Vennie writing it out
Knowing quietly observing
silence
long, long silence
“Sometimes,” Knowing says softly, “lightening strikes and splits open things that could never be split open if not for the power of the electricity. Sometimes what’s inside the open spaces revealed, is a treasure that would have been hidden forever. Thank the lightening when it strikes. It is opening your caves.”
And so we do. We thank those who have become our lightening bolts, striking us, devious, mischievous, and as the smoke rises from our skin, it hurts yet through the process of healing the burns, we learn.
