Equilibrium - A Short Story


Hello, and welcome to the latest post on my blog. Due to family illness, life has been ‘full’ since I last wrote, and although I have several new posts in various states of completion, I must admit that I’m currently struggling to find the right words to finish them.  So, instead, I thought I’d share a short piece originally written in 2014.  "Equilibrium" was later published on my previous blog, "Just Stuff", in August 2018.  I hope you enjoy this brief snapshot of time, which first came alive in my imagination almost twelve years ago.

EQUILIBRIUM 


"Those who love me do not know that, silently, I love you.
Those who see my smile do not see the sadness of unspoken words.
Those who share my life do not know that part of my heart is kept for you.
But it’s there – and you will never know."


She placed the well chewed pen down on her desk and looked through silent tears at the verse she had scribbled absentmindedly onto a piece of scrap paper. Her mind was not on her work. It was not even in the real world. Her mind was in another place, a place where life could not touch her. Where her only constant companion were her thoughts and the possibilities were endless. Her tiny office, windowless apart from a skylight way above her head, seemed claustrophobic, and yet in it she felt safe as she hid behind her two computer screens - a shield against prying eyes.

She tilted her head upwards in a vain attempt to feel the heat from the dim shaft of silvery light which danced around the skylight and hung in the air like a manifesting spirit. But there was no warmth and, not for the first time that day, a cold icicle of pain pierced her heart and a feeling of utter despair descended on her.

The despair emanated from an emptiness somewhere deep within her and  fuelled the confusion of her mind. Trapped in a relationship which was held hostage by an invisible illness, she had misread a display of friendship for something more and, when rejected, she felt foolish, ashamed and confused. The words, hastily scrawled on the paper, were her vain attempt to make sense of those feelings and to extract them from her soul.  

Snapped out of her maudlin meanderings through the maze in her mind by a knock on the door, she quickly wiped her eyes and raised her head so that she could see who it was that intruded on her thoughts. She smiled as she screwed up the piece of paper and beckoned the person to enter as she threw it into the waste bin. For the time being at least, her pain was forgotten.



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