It stretched three houses across in either direction.
Wide and steep, it embodied the backyards.
It was a mystery, for no one could really remember
how it came to be.
Dried red soil filled its etage but at each day's
dawning,crystal dewdrops gave the soil a smooth
feel to the dozen of kids that would flail themselves
bright and early into the folds of this earthly phenom.
On hot days, we played there because it was cool.
On cold days, everyone stayed wrapped around
the pot-bellied stove inside.
I always came, to the special spot.
The haunted spot they called it.
Bushes only grew in the spot, lush, green bushes.
Tall bushes sprinkled with lilac berries.
Everyone stayed away, so did he.
The bushes always seemed to be growing.
They held my secrets, heard my prayers,
caught my tears and quell my fears.
There I found peace, I saw me as somebody,
but nobody saw why I needed that spot.
The little daft girl, they called me.
They watched as I entered the leafy
enclosure, with a jar of lemonade
to bury the sorrows of the previous night.
Wrapped in scratchy burlap sacks,
I came in the winter, seeking warmth
that the fire burning in the stove could not.
Seeking to douse the evil burning in my young
loins, giving my pain to the towering thickets.
They absorbed my sins, but at ten, why was
it my burden to bear?
They couldn't comprehend my fascination
with the spot.
It embraced me, they didn't.
It comforted me, they didn't
The spot knew, they claimed they didn't
It was there in the confounds of Carolinian soil,
knelling close to hell, is where I prayed, where
I cried, where my soul revived
I turned thirteen that year, and I could scarcely
fit into my spot any longer.
The bushes died that year, dropping berry
seeds into the crust of my refuge.
I died that year along with my dreams.
Every night he came to me and I had
no place to go.
The next year, the ditch started to dry up
and as mysteriously as it came to be, years
later only rocky remnants remained.
What remained of me didn't fair as well.
Marjorie Joyce Leslie
06/28/09
Silver trophy winner
Adding your comment:
. A wonderfully moving and captivating story of a life you've penned here, Marjorie 
