Time and Time Again:

 

 

My mind drifts back to a time of long ago. When I walked through the desert unknown, a nomad in a tribe of nothing more than tinkers. Our wares were simple and our needs even more so. I remember my thoughts on a hot summer night.

 

I wished that I were born in another time, a future I had yet to know. Where women did not labor and cater to the needs of their men. Where freedom was admitted to choose a better way. Sadness ran over me as I looked down to my calloused hands cracked and pealing.

 

I looked about me thinking of what lies ahead. Breaking of camp, taking down the heavy tents, loading the caravan, saddling the horses so that the men could mount and ride in front as we tribal women walked behind in the hot sun and felt the pain of the sand blowing upon our faces to weather them even more.

 

Today here I sit in the air-conditioned room, looking around what freedom brought to me. Looking around at the women as they pass by me, alone and left to feign for themselves by men that have not bothered to stick around long enough to watch the growing of their children. To watch as the backs bow, and the veins show in the legs that now go uncovered. The hair gray at an earlier age, not from the sun but from the worry upon the mind.

 

I watch as the world moves so fast that you barely have time to construct a thought when another one is required. Anger breeds among the many, who is there left to care about. Brothers against brothers, fighting among families, hate your neighbor; never give out a helping hand. My how things have chance, and to think this is what I asked for.

 

I looked about me thinking of what lies ahead sadness comes over me as I look down to my calloused hands and wish I was still back in the past when times were so much simpler.

 

by Alexandra K.

May 2, 2004