Through The Screen Door
She sat
Legs crossed
Hopes dashed
World tumbling, hunched over peering into the pool of liquid salt
Bruised a bit by the news
Uncrossed her legs
Stood and rose
Rose and walked
No it was more of a march
One step into the dark and she began to dash
No sprint
Her ambivalent speed
Mirrored her ambivalent hope
But the screen, ripped and torn, worked as a sieve
And the more she pressed her nose into the ragged and rough, pressed not into glass but mesh
The clearer she saw the what was to be seen
Past the fog
Into
Revealed truth
The veil of truth through the rough and ragged rust. No Windex could wipe the dirt and bring a shine. Not with the screen.
No cleansing or scrubbing or grit and might. Power and grease from the elbow of her hand could wipe it till it squeaks a perfectly polished squeak.
So she resolved to see through the filter of filth and pain. Past the crosshairs of the wire that warped the view.
And so it was.
She befriended the screen. And grew to love the protection it brought. The shield it was in its role as screen. And she loved the screen and the view from its other side.
No longer did she long for the polish and pristine lens of a clear view through glass.
She saw the door made of screen as a portal of hope.
Hope lead to hope on hope.
And that lead her to see the cross in her hunched and leaning stance
As the cross of hope, seated at the threshold of Mercy.
New.
And she loved the screen and her view from right here. And she put to rest her longing for more.
And grew to love her view through the ragged screen door.
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elizabeth w. marshall 