Where's my lip gloss?

Invisible....
I sit here, invisible, reading my book in this hallway. Sharing my breathing space with that little black fly that ever seems to follow me.
Doctor's and nurses pass me by wih no hellos....
my world is quiet..yet noise rushes in one ear and out the other.
I read my gardening book, learning of root maggots and meal worms, insect's that devour and slugs that ruin everything...
The things that also appear nvisible at most times but are there nonetheless.
I am surrounded by bugs.
The fly passes me again. I swat at him.
He laughs and carries on as he has for years.
Funny....everyone seems to laugh when you're invisble.
They laugh with each other.
they laugh at a story, they laugh at a joke and then when you ask "What's so funny?"
they stop laughing....and talk over you like you were never there.
They don't even look at you.
The fly brushed my nose.....
did he not see me?
...or was he coming in for a closer look.
Still he laughs as I brush him away.
It doesn't matter that someone thinks your smart, or "Lovely" or that your hair is "fabulous".
It doesn't make you visible...not permanantly anyway.
Invisible.
I fade into the chair I'm seated in and allow the weeds from my gardening book grow up all around me.
I am comforted here....
maybe they will see me if I put on more lipgloss.
mmmm....lipgloss.
invisible but shiny....
like glass!
I'll probably need a good weeding after this.
"WHERE'S MY LIP GLOSS???"

Plain Jane Librarian

"It's nice to see you back to work with your shelving, Jane."

I pretended to smile as I struggled beneath the weight of books I held cradled in my arm. I had found all the volumes I had reluctantly left beneath my bed, after changing my room around.

"What are these, Jane? We've never seen these books before!"

I continued to shelve and reshelve, trying to remember their order for they had not been numbered except for in my memories.

"What are these titles? What do they mean?"

"Yes, Jane. Who are they?"

I wasn't sure what to tell them...knowing the criticism they often throw in my direction. These were books , chronicled by me, of friendships found and lost....and this shelf was thier graveyard. Each spine, a headstone in their memory. A collection of works, so rich, yet tales ending in tragic death.

Titles listed as, Pamela, Tracy, Jennifer, Rae-lynne, Nicole, Andrea, Michelle, , Paula, Sara, Tammy, Marc,Deborah, Noel,Stacy, The Ripplers, and Juanita. Each volume embossed with silver elephants, that when placed on the shelf next to each other it gave the illusion of tail linked to trunk.

"Why the elephants, Jane?"

"Aren't they Pretty?", I asked them?

I used to be the elphant. The obtrusive thing in the room that no one wanted to be around...the invisible elphant that everyone knew was there...but pretended wasn't. The one that took overbearing footsteps and intruded into people's lives without intentionally doing so....but everyone made it clear that I did....

Silver sometimes appears invisible, reflecting light and color, causing it to fade into it's surroundings.

That's what I did.

.....But now immortalized the former friends into the silver form of an elephant. Putting to death the endagered species of friendship. Causing them to fade in the shadows that surround them.

Life becomes quiet in an elephant graveyard.

Elephants will carry the bones of the deceased elephants for miles and miles, grieving their passing, leaving a long line of mourning, a pathway to healing, and the determination to move forward, still.

"Can we read them, Jane?"

"Not today....but, maybe someday , I will read them to you." .......I smiled , reassuringly.

"How exciting!" the librarians exclaimed, chattering about the mysteries encased within as they wandered back to their quarters.

In my heart, I have excavated too many of these cadavers....and my heart grieves...but their order, and their display remind me of something invested in, worthily.

I am saddened at the opportunity to stand in my own elephant graveyard, laying them out in a line, burying the bones of those who once lived in my life, in my heart, in my memory.

Today I leave their bones behind....annd stretch forth into the sun.

I place Juanita on the shelf. The latest of the collection. A deep breath passes from within me. Like lowering a casket into the ground as the preacher says," Amen."

And I turn and let her go.

"I am Jane....and I will begin again...."

Wasted!

I woke up in a bed of debts today.
...heavily weighing me down as I bought gas for my car and the machine declined my card due to insufficient funds.
I am smart with money.....
the blanket of bankruptcy held me there.
...trapped by my ex-husband who left it for me to care for for the last 10 years with no reprieve.
....and still I pay.
I make good money,
I'm smart with money...
But when does it go away?
Like the winter snow and the chill in the air.
When does light break forth and I start to feel free?
When do the layers peel back and release me to live the life I was meant to live...
without Marc's past haunting me every month when the "balance is due"?
Today overwhelms me with Grief as I tear away the layers of my household.
Obsessively
Compulsively
removing the things from my house I haven't used in a year.
Such waste.
Wishing I could remove all that he left behind....and my working all to pay off his waste....

...what a waste....

Plain Jane Beautiful 3

"DO you really need to wear that stuff Jane?"

The voices in the mirror stared at me while I put on my make up.

I always struggled with red hair,

and freckles,

wishing I was someone else...

like those pretty girls I alway s saw in the hallways at school or in the mall.

I think it was mandatory that all red heads have an ugly childhood.....

"How will anyone see who you really are with all that makeup on, Jane?"

I don't wear much..just enough to hide the blotches of my fair skin and some mascara to bring out my eyes .

Don't they know that blonde eyelashes just make you look invisible?

I ignored them as I powdered my face removing the shine.

"Who are they to judge me?"

At school i started to blossom in grade 12...started to discover my beauty.

I came to terms with my red hair and the mole on my face.

I started to tell people it was my other nose.....just in case I needed one.

ALl of my self worth was wrapped up in that mole on my face...

my friends tell me they don't notice it...I still do...

I'm sure the mirror just ignores it...and so do I....

not bothering to ask it the infamous question of...

"....Who's the fairest of them all?"

"Jane you have fair skin."

"Why do you always have to compete, Jane?"

It wasn't competition...it was just to be visible...

to be someone and stay someone....

I continued to not comment. to see past them and apply some lipgloss to finish the look.

I'm not there anymore.

School has long passed me by...but the voices in the mirror still linger ...

trying to tell me who I am.

They're wrong.

I still hear them. but I have to choose when to listen...and to whom...

I look at them in the mirror and then past them to myself and smile.

Their eye's stunned and silent.

They see the difference.

and they wish they could be more like me somewhere deep down.

Polished,

Pretty,

Plain Jane,

...... Beautiful

With eyes and fair skin,

rosey cheeks and kissy lips.

"HAH!"

I laughed at them.....

And left.

A Warrant Out for Coffee

Yesterday, I sat , babysitting a guy coming down off meth. Watching him bang his head on the walls, and running in to stop him from doing it every so often. He talks to me in an Irish accent, telling me his name is Liam.....But it's not. Just previously he spoke to my co-worker, in fluent canadian accent, explaining his life's trials and what led him to meth.
As much as I want to invest in the lives of others, I did not want to invest in this. Too many personalities, and pretences. I don't have the mental capacities to keep up.
I just wanted my hot coffee.

Later a soccer player comes in,
Head injury,
17 yrs old,
And it took 8 of us to hold her still while they injected her with something to anesthetize her long enough to do a scan of her head.
God, was she strong.
God, do I hurt.
God, why did I even buy a coffee this morning when it exists in another part of the hospital?
All this travelling from different departments.....My coffee has become foreign...possibly cold.

Police asked us to keep an eye on a young offender waiting to see the Psychiatrist.
Apparently he had 6 warrants for his arrest...and now we have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't run away....
All I asked myself was....am I ever going to be able to sit and just enjoy the rest of my coffee and read a bit from my book.
Everyone seemed to demand attention from me yesterday.
Even the most delightful taste of my coffee set between three rooms with volitile patients....i was becoming more volitile as it sat there getting cold...

Eventually while I was tending to something else...Housekeeping came by and found a cold coffee sitting there alone and dumped it down the drain thinking it had been abandoned....

My pockets were empty. I could not buy another....
....and it had English Toffee syrup in it.....I paid extra!

I came home exhausted.
Sat in the car for 4 minutes after shutting the engine down just to breathe. I looked over at my backpack and dreaded the burden of lifting it to my shoulder , should I ever decide to get out and go into the house.

But Surprise for me that day, The love of my life had come over, with pizza ordered and tulips for me.
The tulips I had always prayed for, the tulips I envisioned I would carry if someday I would marry.
White ones, with a bit of yellow ones and a hint of orange. I opened the paper and saw them and hugged them with my face deep inside the wrapper and smelled them....Breathing in.

My day at the hospital dissapeared then, as I sat to eat with the two I hold so close to me right now. My tulips set at the table where we eat (....minus a few because Tim wanted my daughter to have some for her room.)
and when it was all over, he still got up and kissed me for being such a good cook.

This morning...my tulips are awakening, more of them crawling out of the greenery to greet me.
Beautiful....
fabulous....
romantic....

...especially with my coffee....

The Tint of Red.

My hands were covered in blood today.

Before last night's shift, All I could think about was the pink sky on the horizon on Valentine's day. It was a wonderful sight. Bird's soaring...floating, really, on the chinook wind that carried them in stillness over the water of the resevior near my house. It was beautiful, and the birds called out, reminding me of my other home on the shores of the UK's Southwest .

But today was red.

Sometimes you forget to put on gloves. or you've run out of them...and the urgency for your hand to help is needed right now.

In a whirlwind of drunken confusion, I stood next to a man who was detoxing from a 2 week binge of drinking. He had no idea where he was...let alone who he was....and his blood was all over the place....and on my hands.

My pink sky turned red today in a sea of casualties and dying people that flooded the room of Emergency.

Yes, I work in Emergency. I have for the last 10 years.

Blood.

it's scary sometimes....

especially when you don't know what's in it...

or what it's gotten into.....

Later I tried to help police undress a man who was soothed by my voice but aggitated by theirs. I only walked 5 feet away and minutes later a tazer was held to his chest.

Police Brutality,

Excessive force,

"Constable Chauchy"...is what everyone referred to him as....actually, it was me that called him that.

Possibly a case of "small man syndrome" wearing a red stripe down the side of his pants.

Now I understand the stuff on the news.

Give these boys new toys and a small dick and they become worse for wear when fighting crime on our streets.

Show offs.

I hate cops

Young cops

New cops.

Adrenaline junkies,

all hopped up on power,

They see blood on their hands and it's of their own doing, their own proddings, their own tauntings...and then when presumed guilty they cover each other and wash their hands free of the speculation.

The good old boys club.

Dirty cops.

A force to be reckoned with.

Oh Lord, Give me strength!!

No matter how much they wash thier hands thiy're still dirty cops.

I wanted to be one some time ago...

Thank God , I was prodded in another direction.

Instead we clean up their mess and tuck their clients all into bed, send them home sober and safe, with someone's business card in their hand for the next bad day they come across.

And at the end of the day we wash our hands.... and are free to carry on.

Guilt Free.

Sound.

Clear headed.

Secure.....with our own abilities to handle the situation....

No stripes,

No tazers,

.....just gloves....if we have time,

Confidence in teamwork,

And hearts that give and voices that soothe.

and as the blood washes away

....it turns pink .....

as it fades down the drain.

I am reminded of my Valentine's Day pink sky....

and the birds....

on the southwest shores of the UK.

Plain Jane beautiful 2

"Jane, It's after 3 am...What are you doing?"
"I'm being inspired."

Charcoal crumbs disappeared from my fingers as a drew a luminous figure on my wall.
Father always saw my talent but did not quite understand where it came from and why at such stupendous hours of the mornings.

"Jane you have school in the morning!"
"I know, Father. I am almost finished."

He closed my door after standing there in his old man underwear, awakened by the light from my room that spilled out into the hallway. I often imagined that it had snuck in under his door and tickled his nose to wake him. It always woke him.
I looked up at my figure, a faceless man in a toppled hat, that hid behind my door when it was open, but watched over me as I slept. He kept me company when I was was left to my own devices in my room.
I looked at my hands.....black with soot.
I wiped them on my shirt and went to bed. My mother would be mad at my laundry somewhere down the road. She always found paint or something there.

She came into my room and saw the figure behind the door
"Oh My Gad!"
My mother didn't like him.
"Where's his face , Jane?"
I drew it faintly because in essence he knew how I felt....how people looked at me...how I sometimes wanted to look at myself.
" It's there mother, You just have to picture it for yourself."
"Oh"....she stared and then commented that i had better clean my room before my father got home from work.
...Then she left.

"
Jane....She doesn't like me..." He said.
"She doesn't have to..... You belong to me anyway.....I like you. Is that not enough?"

"Why do I have to stay behind the door, Jane?"

I closed the door and gave him full access to my room.
I opened the curtains too.

"This is your place when I"m at school."
"You can have it."

"Mrs. Johnson won't let me draw you at school. She says you look evil..."
"SO I'm keeping you here and giving you more space than a piece of paper."

He stood over 6 feet tall, his hat slumped because of my ceiling, his back slouched to fit.
He smiled at me.

In my heart he had been given something, given life, a heart, character and he was full of questions...
He wasn't a voice in my head...he was someone that I created. fictional, yet real .
And I loved him....so he could love me back.....
because so many couldn't....

Much like me...created.... to be loved....Plain Jane, yet beautiful.
with a heart and character.
with so many questions.....
Despite the librarians in the mirror or the voices at school.
My mother painted over him years ago....but I still see him behind the door.
It's still his room while I'm gone.

"I've missed you, Jane."
" You look beautiful!"

I smiled at him.
His hat slumped....his smile wide.
"I am beautiful!"