The boy that wrecked her world.
Once upon a time,
or so we’re told,
there was a blond little girl.
Her hut was a castle
and her world was a dream shrouded in pink.
The wee lass walked through life believing the best,
ofcourse she read the headlines and watched the daily news,
but her world was pink and fuzzy so all those terrible things must happen elsewhere,
in some other place, in some other world.
Naïve, say some.
Idealistic, says her.
The world was a beautiful place.
And so one day,
the little girl came to work temporarily at a school hidden beneath the leaves.
It was like all the other schools she’d come too,
a little noisier, but that was the end of it.
As she was trying to instruct a class in the art of
“how-to-sit-down-and-be-quiet-whilst-listening-to-the-teacher-and-pulling-a-thread-through-a-needle”
a group of youngsters crashed into her classroom,
trashed it in seconds with wet paper towles
and ran off.
As the pedagogic sub she is,
she went after them to ask them to clean up their mess.
On this day,
the sun shone through the windows with the warmth of a summers last effort to beat the oncoming autumn,
the leaves left on the trees rattled in bristling colors of red, orange and yellow.
It was a wonderful october day and she was looking forward to a nice stroll in the fresh air after classes hand in hand with the prince.
Instead this day ended in panic and tears.
As the youngsters were told off,
the got angry.
Not used to being told what to do,
the smallest of them – a thin, blond kid of fourteen or so -
exploded into a cascade of foul language.
He spewed up the dirties words she’d ever hear
- she couldn’t even in her darkest imagination think them up -
and they were all directed at her.
As the words came to an end,
his body took over.
With his fist an inch from her nose,
he threatened her to life.
And threw her into a locker.
The lass was fine with the defamation,
with the threats,
even with being thrown into a locker.
What she wasn’t fine with was the notion,
the realisation,
of the world as it is.
Not as she perceives it,
but as it truly is.
As she crashed into that iron locker
every bad thing she ever read, saw or heard about the world
became true.
Instantly,
everything the papers said was real.
The violence,
the insolence,
the intolerance,
the lack of respect,
the degeneration of our kind.
All of it became utterly true.
The bony kid came back awhile later,
his head hanging in shame,
and he apologised.
Said, he was sorry, that he knew he was wrong and out of line and that he was aware that he had a problem with anger and control.
She accepted, and the shook hands.
Peace.
And that apology was important.
It gave her the hope he momentarily robbed her off.
It gave her hope,
that people can change.
That this world isn’t fallen, not just yet.
There is still hope of tomorrow.
But what is irreversible,
is the burning of her safe, fuzzy world.
As he spat the word whore to her face it came crashing down and broke into a million pieces.
She will never get it back.
And now as she walks through the world,
the shadows are no longer shapes she can play with or not even belonging to trees, houses or animals,
instead the shadows are dangerous, treacherous and watching.
Now,
the world is filled with evil.
Filled with ugliness.
In a sense she should thank him for opening her eyes.
But it is yet too soon.
She do not wish to see.
Once upon a time
there was a girl who saw the good in life,
the love in people,
the hope in the air.
A few days ago,
she kissed her world goodbye.
