Goodbye Tennessee

She sat quietly, not moving in a room that was once filled with love. Laughter. Smiles. Happiness. Then a a random song came on the radio.... "God help me, keep me moving somehow. Don't let me start wishing I was with him now. I've made it this far without crying a single tear........."

The tears started rolling down her face leaving angry red welts in their path. She never could figure out how to cry pretty like all of the other girls.

That one song and with it the memory. Taking her back to Tennessee. Sitting on a rooftop, hearing that same song while the summer heat beat down on the tops of her thighs. Feeling like she could conquer the world. Not knowing that in a few months her world would stop. Shatter really. All of the dreams she had made, all of the plans for the future derailed completely like a freight train wreck.

She could see it in her head, the steam from the locomotive that just couldn't keep moving along the tracks hissing in the cold night air. The wheels kept trying to move, but there was nowhere left to go. The tracks were in a shambles, twisted pieces of metal littering the landscape. A great analogy of her life now. Off those carefully laid tracks and crumpled beyond repair.

It all seemed so helpless and hopeless. Listless, she just sat and thought and thought and thought. Reviewing in her mind snapshots of a life past, present and future. But the future wasn't there anymore. No, that had changed. It was gray and murky; hazy like fog on a San Francisco morning.

Directionless, she switched off the lamp and walked into her bedroom, climbed under the covers and prayed. She prayed for those she loved and those she lost. She prayed that when she woke up, it would all be a bad dream.