This art featured in my memoir, Incandescence Rising Above Darkness is included as a moment of serenity between chapters and does not necessarily have any literal connection to the story.
Incandescence Rising Above Darkness Chapter #16 Forgiveness Is The Best Revenge
My childhood ended the evening the baby-faced monster came through the door. I became a two-thousand-year-old woman in a sixteen-year-old body. Though I did not have a word for what happened to me, I knew it wasn’t right.
I wished I wanted to humiliate him, but if I let myself be filled with hate, I would be like him. So I got up and walked out without looking back. As soon as I was outside, I started to run in the opposite direction of home so no one could predict my path. I hid behind some industrial buildings for a while before I began walking a meandering route down strange little streets. Whenever a car came turning onto the block, I disappeared behind bushes until it was gone.
On a tiny street where no one seemed to be home, I stopped and sat under a ginkgo tree. The tiny fan leaves sprinkled on the ground were so lovely that their grace made me cry. The first tears came softly, and then they flowed like a wild mountain river in the spring thaw, rushing out of my eyes, over my cheeks, across the lawn and the yellow flowers growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. A river of tears poured off my mountain of silence until my eyes were so clean I could see clearly.
Clare Cooley
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