Heartache

It's bitter cold and I'm uncertain I can breathe. I try, but I'm not sure I really want to. Somehow, the sun didn't rise, this morning so I stumble around in the dark, a stranger in my own skin. Yesterday, this was my home. A place of warmth and safety, where friends dropped in for coffee and we had riotous dinner parties. But it must have been replaced while I slept because the house I tiptoe around is nothing but hostile. I glance at the space on the wall where my prized painting hangs. An original, painted by one of the masters. The thing I idolized, worked for, saved for. It hangs in strips, shredded, irreperably damaged. Something cuts me as I fall to my knees and I see shards of a shattered life strewn across the floor like garbage. As much as I treasured them, it would be futile to try and repair my beloved canvas or rematch the pieces of a pulverized life. I HAVE to take that breath. The enormity of my loss will forever change me. Perhaps, in time, I'll find another masterpiece. But slowly, one step at a time, I must move away from here and invent a new life.