Future personified in my mother's dresses

With my two hands, 

I can part a sea of water to just barely squeeze myself through. 

I do it not only beause I need to survie the tsunami,

I do it so that I can relieve myself of the grips that the expectaions of others 

have branded me with. 

I'm used to all of the marks there, 

they are not a private affair. 

But at the moment, the publicity of them is starting to worry me. 

It is by far too late to merely apply some vitamin E oil and hope for the best.

Not even scratching them out with the claws of a Pheonix would revive the skin beneath.

While I shouldn't need to revival because I'm still alive,

but something about the feel of them irks me yet. 

They don't feel as soft as the flesh around them, 

but they're not as rough as the scab they once might have been.

With my two hands, 

I have forced myself upward from the fall that I might as well have signed up for. 

So many things that I should have and could have known by now,

but instead I learned the lessons of another path 

that never even looked like a path to begin with. 

Because of the events that I've had to witness,

cause, 

and endure, 

I have a whole new list of regrets to reflect upon and ponder.

I've found myself conjuring them at four in the morning without fail.

I see so many things ending and I can't quite see through the fog of them yet

 to see the myriad of things beginning. 

They are there, 

or rather IT.

My new start for myself exists and it is just beyond my reach.

I haven't broadened my horizons to encompass it yet,

and I'm not ready to.

My new start will be the unworn dress that I bought anyway because

it looked to be worth my stare. 

I will fight my future battles in that gown with the elegancy 

that I would portray by simply waltzing down the street with it. 

I don't expect it to hang on me the way a proper dress should,

I expect my more than sight curves to be drawn out almost right, concealing most of them.

In general,

I expect it to be a little too much like trying on dresses from my mother's closet as a child. 

None of them would fit me,

and I wasn't trying to become my mother, 

but I just wanted to see how big the shoes of my life would be 

because those were the only ones that I had been exposed to. 

My mom's dresses were a bit more like the fifties

and all I saw when I looked out the window were scarce and sheer.
Those dresses of my mother held solid color,

they had lasted from owner to owner until the strolled into the back corner of 

an old lady's closet. 

They were dainty,

but they lasted for so long.

By this point in her life, 

the point when I didn't know the difference between certain 

defining colors ,

she still wore nice dresses, and her hair still 

smelled of the hair products that she taught me to love. 

The rest of her closet was strictly for formal wear.

Before he evaporated,

my father's suits shared the home that catered to my mother's.

Madonna really did create a nice movement with teaching women 

that it was not the dress that defined them,

or the body that filled it out,

no, it was the raw mind beneath the head of thick, medium length 

silver hair that made the woman all worth while.

It wasn't until about age ten that I realized that the majority of girls 

allowed themselves to hide in those dresses, 

allowed themselves to be molded by them. 

It has now come to my understanding that I have 

a plethora of strong, elegant dresses of my own hanging in my closet.

I no longer need the special occasions to wear them, 

but as they are pleasing to my eyes,

I know that they will never matter as much as they once did.

My beginning used to be in another woman's closet,

but I will never need to share my space anymore.

I have all the gowns I will need for the era that I hold myself in. 

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace.