The Woman

The woman standing before me is someone that I no longer recognize. When I speak to her, she’s off into a world parallel to mine. Only she can decrypt what her mind encodes and all I can do is listen. She is not the woman I once knew.

Her mind is now filled with images of me that no longer exists. Images that died over a decade ago. She remembers the child I once was, but not woman I am today. Who am I to contradict her last moments of lucidity? To her it was gold, as for me it was nonsense.

Pity consumes my thoughts the moment she enters the room. Her now sagging face from sleep deprivation and her unexplainable black and purple bruises. The terror in my eyes trying to rationalize what I see. The woman standing before me is gone, yet somehow still here. She is not the woman I once knew.