No Words

There were no words to be spoken on the day the young woman walked away from her life. The words those who had harmed her wished to hear, she did not speak, for they did not deserve such comfort. The words she would speak to those who had been kind to her had long since been spoken, falling on deaf ears in the warm earth. So silently she slipped away.

Before that day, she had a name. She had a place in the world, however reluctant. She had a hometown, a history, a worldview. All those things she left behind with most of her belongings, abandoned with the broken dreams of the past and the dim world in which she had lived.

 

She has no name now. She is a young woman, like any other. Her features are plain, her speech is neither loud nor quiet, her tone neither soft nor hard. There is nothing striking or attractive about her, and most people don't look. She is not a butterfly; for all that she had a metamorphosis.

 

Sometimes she thinks about that. She did not turn into a butterfly like she had expected. Leaving behind the dim oppressiveness of her small town did not give her wings, and her bland exterior did not become colorful. What has she become?

In the city, she blends in. She does nothing in particular, working whichever job she can get at the moment, using whatever name comes to mind. It is hard to get a real job that way, without an identity and all the proper paperwork, but she gets by, just barely. It is enough for her.

 

One night in a crowded bar she meets a man who speaks to her kindly, for no reason she can understand. He buys her a drink, and they speak of butterflies, and her failure to become one. He tells her the secret she's been keeping from herself all along: she is a frog. Not a pretty colorful African frog of some exotic sort, but the plain sort of frog little boys bring home in their pockets. She is ordinary, and yet... it is soothing for her to know this, to know her place in the world. She is a frog, and she is a young woman, and her life is being shaped by her decisions on where to land when she hops.

 

He is not a little boy, and she does not go home in his pocket. In fact, she doesn't go home with him at all. She finishes her drink, thanks him for his kindness, and goes home alone to nothing. She dreams of ponds and lily pads.

 

There are no words to be spoken on the day she leaves this life. There is no name for her tombstone, no one to grieve her. She was a frog, and that is all, but she was also a young woman. Once, however, for a brief moment, someone understood her.

by lecanis (Viewed 213 times)