She is Pain

The room is a mirror of her heart. Dark, empty, scattered. Photographs torn from their frames and shattered pieces of glass scattered like ashes in the wind waiting for a breeze to carry them away to some unseen beauty. Red and blue lights peeking though the gently waving curtains but the rays never reach the mobile above the crib. The blankets are spilling out over the top of the bars as if the crib is a tower where a damsel in distress was trapped and the blankets were made into a rope for escape. This is not the case.

Blood smears her lips like a clown's poor attempt at lipstick, across her cheek and down her neck as if an artist marked her as his own. The tiny hand print on her shoulder could almost be mistaken as a child's accident during finger painting but she knows better. This is why she can't look at it. Can't force herself to face that reality.

The sirens are off outside, but she can hear them resounding in her head like a broken record. Perhaps those screams, those cries, those thundering footsteps will never end. They will simply remain etched in her memory like a movie set on a loop. She will never escape and perhaps even some small part of her does not want to escape it. She deserves this suffering because she was not there to protect her child.

This child's hand prints are all over this house. Chubby fists waving wildly in the air. Her grip on her finger had only gotten stronger by the day. The eyes had been brighter. The child had had potential that its parents had never even dreamed of.

Curling in upon herself, she barely noticed the shards of glass digging into her knees or how behind her two men have entered the room and are trying to hoist her to her feet and ask her questions. How can she answer questions when she cannot find her voice? Forget her voice -- how can she do anything when she doesn't even have the will to live anymore? Her heartbeat has been taken away from her -- torn from her. She shouldn't even be alive.

There is no such thing as feeling pain. She is pain itself.