text: Rosa Johnson Chilsed 
   
   
   Interlude 
   
  Chapter One: After the Rain 
  I am hurt. I don’t understand why it happened, but it did. I was not in control, they were. When I think about it, I get all emotional and angry. This anguish is beyond my control sometimes. I am not a sociopath or narcissistic; I am hurt, and befuddled. Why? Why do these pieces just peel away? How do I grab hold of them and paste them back somehow. My love for life, what happen to it? I don’t even see motherhood in the light that I once did. I want to run. I have always run, but where will I run too? How will I get there? I thought about moving to Europe or Africa, but the fear of the unknown, unknown fears envelopes my heart. My adrenaline propels like a locomotive, like a race horse. I take a pill. I take a pill for sleep, even when it’s not night time, to sleep, to melt away from these pieces. I hope when I wake I will like snow-white, I will wake up and all will be happily ever after. I take a pill to have a bowel movement, a pill to keep my hypertension steady so I will live, but do I want to live? I say I do, but I really don’t know if life is all they depict it to be. I take pills to relax spiritual muscles in my soul from tension, tension that is caused from existing. I exist. She exists. Little pieces are chiseled away, little stones have broken up my corpse, it plastered, and it is my soul. It is seared, like a hot iron. It is non-existence any more. I am. But it is what it is. 
  Chapter Two: Symphony, No Solace 
  I hear the sound of a new day approaching. My body awakes, it betrays me again. I wake up. I step to the back door, not mine someone else’s back door, an as the door is open wide, I hear the sounds of morning. The birds’ chirps, singing their national anthem with harmony. They sing their faith songs of thankfulness, but I have no song. My song wasn’t taken from me. I had no control of it. They did. I just exist. I light up, smoke, exhale, and listen to their symphony. No instrument, no choreographer, just unity. America it should observe these creatures and learn. Like the psalmist state, observe the ant. I did, and they too, wake up ready to work, ready to build, not taking little pieces of the innocent, but working, forging community. Not in my world. It isn’t like the ants or the birds; everyone is for themselves, looking to get ahead even if it takes homicide to do it. To accomplish what they sought for, even if it is to rape, kill, manipulate, abuse, or lie. Its selfish and unfair, this world. 
  I walk close the door to the singing. It’s annoying. What the hell are they happy about? Did they not look in my window, no their window, it is not mine, and see I toss and turn; my sleep abated me once again. No rest. I guess I will have to take another pill so I can escape for a little while. Maybe when I wake, I will before the creator and finish getting my torment and punishment. I only have one question for him, and that’s why do I have to suffer so much? Why wasn’t I blessed to have my own home to raise these children? Why didn’t I have a mother to protect me from the bad men, the monsters of yesteryear? I don’t know if he cares enough to answer. I never get answer that matter anyway. Even my captures can’t tell me why they chose me to torment. I have done no wrong to anyone by being born, but yet I am punished. I am tormented profusely. I am scared and alone. Have you ever been in a place, where there are a lot of people, noise supersedes the norm, and yet your mind is telling you are alone? I have that happen all the time. I am alone. I have children to rise, I am alone, a man is on top of me, I don’t love him, but afraid to be alone. Alone. I am alone. I don’t like this loneliness, I want to love and be loved, but loneliness engulfs me like fly is caught into a spider’s web. Alone. 
  chapter Three: The Epic of Hatred 
  "Mara, ma’am, Mara get your ass in here a wash these damn dishes"!. "Didn’t I tell you to have these dishes washed before I get back"? "You are a hard head son of bitch", her mother fumed those usual obscenities out of her pie hold. She vehemently, "Get you stupid ass in here right damn now". "Yes ma’am", she answered. Her heart is beating, palpitating. She is afraid of what her mother will do when she comes out of the room. "Girl, did you hear me"? She was used to these songs she loved to sing without tune or music. "Get your ass in here before I come back there and get you". Mara walks with stones in her shoes. She moves as fast as she can. By the time she makes it to the living room her mother has the phone receiver in her hand aiming it towards her head. Momma I am sorry, she was about to say, when the phone and her skull collided. She knew not to cry or it would only make matters worse. So she took the blow like always. When the fist went to her head and her face and her back and her head. She didn’t move. She knew not too. Or it will get worse. Her baby sister and older sister sat in the living room watching TV. They never have to do anything. They have Mara to do it. But then they get the credit for it. They get praised, rewarded. While she gets the boot, board, broom, the tongue lashing, the punches, the hurts, the pieces are being chiseled pieces at a time.  
  I washed the dishes that day.  I have been washing dishes since I was three years old. I would ask to do them to keep my sibling from getting in trouble. I always manage to do something wrong that would bring harm my way. I am 16 years old now. I dropped out of school to get away from her, ma’am. She doesn’t love me. She told me all the time that she wished that she hadn’t had me, and that ever since I was born, her world had been bad. I don’t understand why she didn’t abort me or just kill me when she pulled the gun on me, and put it to my head. She should of, then, I won’t have to try to maintain the act of being alive. I am dead already. Just haven’t been buried just yet, but through my story you will soon understand why I am not alive, but dead. 
   
   
   Publication Date: October 12th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-handmaiden2012