Bridges

Today as I drove to work my spirit was open in a way that it has not been for some time. I felt free and light, possibilities swoomed around me like fragrant flowers. I could actually smell happiness, love, grief and loss. The ambrosia had me heady as if I had drank champagne. I had my windows rolled down and was listening to the sweet sounds of a woman singing about loneliness and the moon her voice crooned to the melodic twangs of an acoustic guitar. I turned my radio up loud and felt embraced and nurtured. I was the me the universe intended me to be and my battle scars from a life hard lived seemed to turn from scabs to diamonds, rubies, sapphires, turquoise that glittered and gleamed brilliantly on my skin. I was full and overflowing I felt I could weep and yell a warriors guttural victory cry all at once.

I saw a bus with steel bars up to its darkened windows and the words “North Carolina Division of Corrections Prison Transport” written on the side and could see bodies of people pressed up against the slight openings meant to vent outside air inside the bus. They seemed like caged birds hungry for fleeting fumes of freedom and I wanted to speed up to ride alongside the bus turn my radio up louder so they could catch a breeze of freedom like the aroma of a neighbors cook out in the summertime and have it as a keepsake during their days of incarceration.

I couldn’t catch the bus but have the memory of their life essence stretching itself against the constraints of its confinement. Life is meant to grow and blossom and will in spite of horrible circumstances and unfertile soil. I am a tiny flower breaking through the crack in sidewalk cement.

Life is possibility. ……………                                               …………..                              ………….

This essay was created by Teri Hariston, a writer, poet and truth-teller who lives in Winston-Salem, NC.  Teri is moved by the compliment of opposites as they unfold in life, love, and as exhibited by humankind’s inhumanity towards itself.

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