Transformation - yeah, it feels a little like this

Focus. Forget what's just happened. Forget the mistakes, the stopping and starting, the frustrations of the day thus far. There is only this moment - this one chance to get it right.

Wind-up, wound-up. Coiled. And waiting.
Pacing. Wait - No. No pacing. Pacing diffuses energy – did you ever stop to think about that?

Standing. Waiting. Still…yet not. Placid calm belied only by anger, desperation, and “unbe-fucking-lievable”-ness building behind the eyes.

Poised. The pinball pin about to come smashing through the gate.
Crouching tiger, hidden…wait - wrong country, wrong story.

Somewhere – in the back corners of her mind – music registers.

Happy?
Joyful?
Laughing?

How DARE they delight while she suffers in the shadows!
How can they be so ignorant? How can they not see in her writhing body the pain that each peal of laughter brings?
Straight pins shoved up underneath her fingernails wouldn’t compare to this torture.

Laugh upon stabbing laugh upon stabbing and cutting and bruising laugh builds up quickly. And agonizingly . . . slow. Each laugh reinforcing the shattering blow of the previous one.

The dam gives way, the torrent breaks through: she teeters on the brink. With sudden, crystalized clarity – the confrontation begins.

No one ever yet died of a broken heart.