BROKEN SHELLS

His memories washed over me, like waves rolling up onto shore, leaving behind debris. Broken pieces of the past tangled in the seaweed and imbedded sea-shells in the sand. The footprints left behind me reminded me of his spirit although I was the one left behind. There was no one to carry me except for my belief that the Lord did not leave me alone while I was walking.

For when the waters were calm and the sunsets were breath-taking, there was not a threat of destruction that ever crossed my mind, that is until it happened. Not being prepared left a traumatic imprint in my heart like the ink of a tattoo. Nothing could ever remove what had been burned and branded into my skin.

Conversations from previous moments are like recordings programmed on repeat, playing over and over in my head. There is no erase button and the batteries in the mental radio will last a lifetime. It is torture having to hear all the promises, lies and decoyed emotion like a twisted nursery rhyme sang to a child in f#.

Once upon a time, not to long ago there was a pile of sea shells left behind by an unknown person on a park bench. I picked up on shell at a time, examining each one closely and making sure the sand-dollar imprint was undisturbed. I chose a few that seemed perfect leaving behind the “not-so perfect” ones.

Like a broken sand-dollar, sometimes a persons design is chipped, broken and missing part of the symbol. However, that doesn’t leave person permanently damaged. No one knows how the shell was broken or even where the shell first started from.

Broken and not-so perfect was my judgement deficiency that left me like an object of “pick and choose.” My imperfections seemed fix-able and were repaired with edible plaster by amateur construction workers. All the major renovations could have been avoided just by using a simple band-aid.

You can’t read a book by its cover nor can you tell where a shell washed up from. Many will try to assume but no one will ever truly know.

Whether the shell was washed up on shore traveling from the French Caribbean or project waters of Africa wherever it ends up, it has a brand new beginning. It doesn’t matter were it started from or how many times it was tossed back into the ocean. The precise map of the journey will never be known and the story will be left untold until someone who lived the experience can tell it.

Like an old woman in her rocking-chair, there will always be memories to speak of. Then one day she will pull a sea-shell out of here pocket and speak of its’ journey’s. “I was once like this sand-dollar. I was broken and incomplete and no one wants a broken one. When a woman’s heart has been broken she is forever damaged.” The old woman would say. “But for every hand that has held me, looked me over and then threw me back has left a marking of some-kind. The person has touched my life somehow and even though I was only held for a moment? The optical thought of being kept and cherished by someone who showed some interest even for a little while, will last for an eternity. While looking at the broken shell in her hand she says, When the time is right, God will send 'ME' a whole one.”