Lifetimes
Lifetimes
It wasn’t in this lifetime
That I found what you may call
A soulmate.
We did not buy a house and have children.
We didn’t start our dream animal rescue center
Where we taught our children to be good to all
Living things.
We never picked tomatoes and berries from our garden
And my prize-winning roses never did bloom
In this lifetime.
Other Lifetimes
Most of them got married
The functional ones had kids
The kids take cute pictures
New school clothes, Halloween pictures
Baking or playing outside
The singles take photos of themselves dressed to the nines
looking fine, with candy on their shoulder
Cocktail in hand
No one’s lonely
Then, there’s a photo of just a hand with a dazzling ring
Hair and makeup
Trips to foreign places
A new house! A new job!
A new baby!
A toast! A gift!
This lifetime is a gift. How could it be anything but?
They have champagne. They have wine.
He has some beer. She drinks a little more.
There are jokes about mothers and wine
He drinks beer with his friends
It goes on and on, some survive
Some don’t
Shadows
Some people cry when they drink
No matter the occasion
The spirits taunt their ancestral wounds
They remember those things
They have carried around for centuries
Finally feeling the weight of shadows in the body
I can’t drink anymore
By this age
I’m all shadows
The weight would kill me
This was the merging of a collection of three pieces previously written. The content is not meant to disrespect any lifestyle by any means, it merely represents a singular viewpoint, one that I hope has universal qualities to it. Thank you for reading.
© 2022 Elizabeth Mathews
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‘Lifetimes’ was written by Elizabeth Mathews, one of our newest members. Watch for more posts from her. You can find her author page here on The Creative Exiles.
https://www.creativeexiles.com/author/elizabeth-mathews/
- The Wailing Woman - December 26, 2023
- When I became a mountain - January 8, 2023
- Lifetimes - November 2, 2022
Interesting perspectivers in this collection. Nice work, Elizabeth.
Thank you so very much.
Thank you for sharing. Beautiful lyrical feel. jamie
Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate your feedback. 🙂