Life. Speed. Breathe.

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17...

She began to drown, in the last year of school.  It was sink or swim and she chose suffocation, amidst the claustrophobia of final exams, university entrance and choices.  Nothing was real as she sat transfixed at that wooden bench, in the hot millennium sun.  She saw the studious shiny ponytails, future doctors, scientists and lawyers, bright young things.  She held her breath.  It was not time to exhale into her life, yet.

LIFE

18, 19, 20...

She developed the usual healthy fear of numbers and milestone agendas.  They were all conforming to the future but she failed to start the race.  Friends were lost one, by one, she watched them rush ahead.  Such was life.  Sometimes she was anxious of her amble.  She had already missed the starting gun.  She managed to lose her years somewhere between a Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea, in the wilderness of weather maps, winding roads, and waves, and waves, and waves.

SPEED

21...

One day her impervious playground began to crumble.  She had succumbed.  Life was around her, ahead of her, poisoning her thoughts with insecurity.  Why.  Am.  I.  Different?  The future taunting until she feared, she would never touch it.  She tried to freeze time, escape the dirty, dirty numbers.  The cancer inside her mind, the pain, the tears, her mother cried.  There would be no birthday that year.

BREATHE

22, 23, 24...

It was ironic that she would begin to breathe among highways, heatwaves and high-rises.  She watched people plugged in to the grid of life, until their mindless directional chatter subsided to static.  She disconnected, preferring her still frame moments, to their blind motivated blur.

25...

She met him when she stayed and broke the rules that said move on.  She worked a dead end job behind a bistro counter and trusted what she saw across the cash register, her life speed, in his eyes.  They unfolded together, living inside the moments of pause, in a world on fast forward.

Image by Walmink
Courtesy of Creative Commons