Rebecca Carter

MORIBUND
The face of aggressive relapsing-remitting MS*

She lies in the darkness, knees pulled tightly to her chest.
Arms wrapped firmly 'round, holding the only comfort and closeness she knows.
Runnels of anguish flow freely, yet not a sound is heard. Her body, the battleground of a relentless unforgiving war raging deep within itself.
A pawn, encapsulated and caged, suffering the only price to be paid.

Fear encrusts her wings.
The wings that no longer take her into the white fire of the moon.
Torment sings its eerie songs to her soul, and a whisper becomes a scream.
Aspirations hold only the wariness of a colorless future,
and the gray incipient rays of the present.

She has been washed in a river of tears,
and knows well the bitter taste of the oceans.
Her face is wretched with the silent unseen ravages of the past, the desperation of the present,
and the hideous vision of the incubus of the future.

The light in her eyes has been eclipsed
by an ever-ensuing fate
from which she cannot be released.
Her resolution diseased from constant conflict with a
catalyst she has become irresolute against.
Combat...ceaseless combat.
Objectives to the aftermath of war.
A liability which must be challenged to avoid the total
holocaust of her existence.

Reluctantly she accepts the vision.
She is a mercenary.
She perceives through her mind's eye that she has
unwittingly been chosen for the role of warrior.
A path she must walk alone, however militantly.
With weary determination, she ascends once more
into the bemired hollows of her soul; digressing once again
into the deepest,
most elemental fibers of her existence.

It is in this place that she will find the
mythical light of Valhalla.
First the recall; then the rapture.
She will exhaust the sum and substance of this essence
with all the intensity of a harnessed beast .
With deliberation, she will consume fiercely in direct proportion
to the antipathy she feels toward this ravager of body and soul.
And, with the sun, the Phoenix shall rise once more.

She lies in the darkness, knees pulled
tightly to her chest.
Arms wrapped firmly 'round, holding the only comfort and
closeness she knows.
Runnels of anguish flow freely, yet not a sound is heard.
Her body, the battleground of a relentless unforgiving war
raging deep within itself.
A pawn...

*Previously published in MS Living.

Rebecca Carter is 44 and lives in Hibbing, Minnesota. She has been successfully living with the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis for 21 years. Beginning in the year 2000, Dust & Fire wanted to distinguish between the writing and art it published in it’s annual anthology. In that year, they began awarding a certificate of honor to the best in each class, as judged by it’s Woman’s Studies and English Department; and also changed the subtitle/description of it’s anthology to read Annual Anthology of Women’s Writing & Art.