Memoir
She was two.
Her eyes are constantly wide with undeniable curiosity.
The very bare concept of life excites her.
Her heart beats quickly, rapidly, at the very pace her mind is spinning with the idea of possibility.
She was 5.
Her eyes shone with the new knowledge gained ever day.
She was learning.
She was happy.
She had a brother.
She came home to mommy and daddy every day waiting for her on her favorite red couch.
She was 10.
Her eyes glistened with knowing that she liked who she was becoming.
She liked her, and so did mommy and daddy.
Who she came home to every day sitting on her favorite red couch.
She was 14.
Her friends knew her as the girl with the deep blue eyes and brown hair that never told everybody everything.
Not even her parents who she came home to every day sitting on her favorite red couch.
She was 17.
Her eyes were burning with desire to leave.
She was smart.
She knew that.
She was smart, which means she knows that things change.
She still comes home every day,
But dad isn’t there any more on her favorite red couch.
She was 20.
Her eyes reflected the possibilities presented right in front of her.
Right now, was make it or break it.
She was deciding the path for the rest of her life.
And she liked that.
She was 25.
You could tell from her sharp blue eyes that she was organized.
She was a writer.
She wrote what was going on in her mind.
Most of the time.
She was 30.
Her eyes smiled back at her husband in the chapel.
They went home that night and she lay in bed thinking.
Thinking about her mom, and her brother, and her old favorite couch.
She hadn’t seen that red couch in a very long time.
She was 40.
Her gentle blue eyes looked down on her two kids.
Her friends still knew her as the girl with the deep blue eyes and brown hair who never told anybody everything.
Not anyone.
She was 45.
Her eyes looked down at the paper as she finished her fourth novel.
Writing had lost some of its original delight and spontaneity.
But she still wrote.
About things like the brother she had but never saw.
She wrote what was in her head.
Some of the time.
She was 55.
Her blue eyes looked at her favorite red couch with nostalgia.
She sat on it pretending to be her parents.
Since neither of them were here to sit on it anymore.
She was 65.
A tear fell from her watery blue eyes as she sent her son off to college.
He was going to create himself.
Just like she had so long ago.
She missed that.
She was 70.
Her eyes had lost it’s sparkle.
Nothing excited her anymore.
Who did she have to share it with?
Her husband was gone.
Her kids lived far away.
That was that.
She was 80.
Her broken blue eyes looked at her final book.
It was a picture book.
It was called my favorite red couch.
It was a children’s book.
To her, it was very sad.
She was 87.
She missed her mom.
She missed her dad.
She missed her husband.
She missed her red couch.
She still didn’t tell anybody everything.
She wrote one last thing.
Some call it a memoir, some call it a poem.
I call it this.
And then she closed her blue eyes.
