The Rug Beneath Her Feet

A beautiful Oriental rug it was

My balance on top it kept

All the designs met up articulately

A geometric pattern presented perfection  

Cherry, alabaster and moss intertwined

A regular routine – hard, taxing work

Little time for dreams, instead tiny pink pills

Glamorous events and beautiful leather

And silk and pearls and red, manicured nails 

Champagne in flutes, paintings on the walls

One bitter night when owls didn’t hoot

Coming home from a glorious affair

My heels ceased to meet with soft tapestry 

The room had become a burial ground

Only lingering ghosts shimmied around

I used to eat gourmet ice cream on the rug

With a precious, elegant silver spoon

That I usually reserved for special occasions

Beauty had been a constant in my life

Until a fast moving car, a driver awry 

A split second, no time to ponder even

He picked me up in his frustrated drive

He left me as scattered fragments of a person

My beautiful Oriental rug dissipated 

In a cloud of smoke

Into thin, flimsy air 

I resurfaced in a cold, metallic room

Latex coated hands inches from my face

Surrounded by screaming red and sterile white

Months later, my face a patchwork

An ancient, wrinkled map of rivers

And streams and waterfalls running into each other

My feet walked on cold, stone ground 

Until I decided to reconstruct the gap 

Between my feet and the depths of the Earth

My beautiful Oriental rug

became a field, plowed in the spring 

In preparation for the harvest

Gold, weaved through glorious rose and auburn

Winter seeds sown into the ground

I was thrown into another life

But I embraced it, indeed I graced it

blooming with the beauty that I found
had been inside, all along.