There She Is

There she is. The palms of her aged hands wrinkled from over 40 years of worry leak with anxiety as she stares at the man who broke her heart, along with her daughter’s so long ago. The cracked walls of the gym seemed much less intimidating at her class’s 30 year reunion than they did years past. The love of her life stands at a distance with his husky back braced and head held high. The cleft chin she remembered sensually caressing on dark nights to ease his pain away from the woes of being a black man trying to support his family hadn’t changed a bit. Before she left home she made sure to have her daughter flat-iron and barrel curl her naturally lengthy tresses so that the light would reflect off of the fresh for the occasion artificial blue black hair color which covered her grays. She knew her ex-husband, estranged for nearly 20 years would be there. After the little girl whom she had raised into a young woman finished applying make-up that she never would’ve otherwise worn to her already youthful looking complexion, she examined herself for assurance that he would know she made it on her own all these years…and  looked good doing it. Yes she had made it, graduated college even though it was well over the 10 years than she had planned. But she did it, single parent and all and now reigned as head of the Social Work department. Now within a few feet of him, she expresses all of her accomplishments to her old classmate and glances out of the corner of her ebony eye, twinging with pain as thoughts and memories flood back into her mind. She is better than that, better than him, he didn’t deserve her and still doesn’t, he left,  but she loves him, how could he break her heart after being the only man in her life for so long? She forgives him, no she doesn’t, yes she does, no, he wishes he could have a woman like her, she has a daughter not him. Haa! Look what he missed out on…no dumb ignorant woman can compare to her. She shakes her head to bring her mind back under submission to reality then slightly tilts her head in manners of a meek greeting towards her first love and his second wife before walking towards the nearest exit sign heading to her car.