TILL DEATH DO US PART

                                

I am a princess.

I am young and radiant and have wished, for my entire life, for my prince to come.

I have dreamed for all of my young life of horse-drawn carriages and a gown of flowing lace whose endless train rippled like the serpentine foam of ocean waves.

I have nodded with the pleasure of the saints, to my imaginary soldiers, who line the dotted path of their perfect union as they stand in breath-held reverence with raised, crossed-handled swords, in heartfelt allegiance to God and country.

I have heard the cadence of my people. The chants of my friends, my family, my well-wishers who have gathered, like pilgrims beneath a sky of forever royal blue whose otherwise perfect complexion is interrupted by the few, errant clouds which drift as languorously as a barely spoken summer wish.

I am a princess.  

Of Santa Fe, Texas.

And I am gone.

I will soon be the sunlit dust of the open fields whose every particle will fly like a million lost angels who are desperately trying to find their way home.

Just hours ago, I was an indelible, undeniable presence of detectible vibrancy.

I stood on the earth, often painted toes to green grass barefoot, set free to wander and draw in, with every breath, the immutable power of forever which is the invisible and exclusive chemical that is shared by just arrived newborns and still growing children, who, when they become teenagers, tend to gulp it down, which in turn makes them impossibly intoxicated on the power of promise and hope,

And now I have vanished, without a trace, like an instant sacrifice for the rapture, who didn’t get the chance to protest or leave a note of farewell.

I am still new. 

I will always be new. 

That is how you and the whole world will always remember me.

And yet mom will never stop designing and refining the vision that she has of me, from deep within the dimly lit workstation of her hard-working heart. 

Because that is what a mother does. 

She labors.  She births.  She plans.

We are her life’s work to the day that she dies. 

Not us.  

Her work will go on.  It just will.

And yet I will remain an unfinished canvas.  A painting of an about to blossom Texas rose whose fragrant peach-pink petal skin is now riddled with mutilating entrance and exit wounds.  A victim whose stilled, left behind body is as cold and rigid as the chains of an abandoned playground swing on an unforgiving December night.

For you, no matter what you see of my remains, I will forever remain the swirl of images which have been captured in memory like netted fish.

I will be the now impossible to look at frozen-in time-photos, forever consecrated in our family albums which from its very inception could never contain the fast-rising tide of impossible happiness. 

Christmas. Birthdays. Anniversaries. 

My first grown-up bathing suit.  The heels that I will never master.  Dressing up like the grown-up woman that I will never to become.

The pages which follow, instead of displaying snapshots of me swirling in the sun in my wedding dress, or clapping at my baby’s first steps will remain every bit as stunned, muted and bare as you.

I guess what I need you to know is that I am at peace.

I am not scared and no longer need my Little Mermaid nightlight.

Death and gunfire have matured me faster than life ever could.

All the children and there are so many here, want you to know that we are as close to you right now as you need us to be.

We hear you.

We are watching you in silent vigil.

And we all feel share one single thing: the overwhelming and insatiable need to take care of you.

And so, we will.

We will be your invisible caretakers. We will work, without sleep, in the dimly lit workshop of our own hearts, to help create the vision that we have for you.

We will visit you in your dreams and in the music of prayer.

We will whisper to you in the in the currents of the wind.

We will stand behind you, burrow our heads deep into your back and help you remember the smell of tossed like parade confetti baby powder and the scent of  our still damp hair that smells like strawberry shampoo.

We will helicopter.  We will hover.

We will never die.