I Am Ready Poem by The Poet Darkling

Staring in the mirror at the stranger that is me, I wonder to myself when exactly did I forget what it was to be a woman? I close my eyes and try to remember the feeling of my child suckling at my breast, but it eludes me…I have forgotten the pain of childbirth. There's no more tugging at the hem of my skirt, no more faces full of sunshine and rainbows and no more small voices drowning out the sound of heartbreak.

Gone too is the taste of lipstick moist on my mouth, the smell of his aftershave on my pillow, the feeling of silk on my calf as I glide the stocking up toward my thigh, and the burn of his whiskers on the nape of my neck as he caresses me. I'm no longer in demand. I've been cast aside, left to float on my tears and fend for myself.

I have vague glimpses of a tow-headed girl, barefoot and smelling of wildflowers, running through a lush green field. Her soft laughter floats on yesterday's breeze to my ears, and I feel her longing sighs as if they were expelled from my own chest. Where has she gone?

I reach into the past and try to grasp the dreams that were dreamt, but they melt away in my hands like so many snowflakes on my tongue on a silent Christmas night. The effervescent bubbles of hope that churned the wheels of ambition and fueled the fires of faith have floated away like balloons into an atmosphere of harsh reality.

My tired, wrinkled body gives up fighting the disease and pain that have ravaged me for a lifetime. My collective heartbreaks and disappointments have all but dissipated into a fog somewhere in the back of my mind to keep those lost memories of my youth company. All that I'm left with is déjà vu, mixed with sour regret and an impending feeling of doom.

I am alone in a dark room, lit by the flickering orange glow of my last candle and I am ready. Silence envelopes my soul as I sit in anticipation of the arrival of my last visitor. He will be here anytime now, his red eyes glowing from beneath his hooded figure. He will not smile and I will hear the faint cries of both the blessed and the damned, but I will not be afraid when I see him emerging gently from the surrounding mist…and when he reaches his hand out to me, I will take it.