They'll Say About Her Way... Poem by Leah Ayliffe

One day when she's old and gray
they'll talk about all the ways she charmed the world with her smile,
the way she would fall asleep to an open window
listening to the melancholy sound of the evening dove.
When she has lived and touched all the corners of earth and sea
with wrinkled skin and memories fading
they'll remember how much she wanted everything
to know kindness in strangers and wish for only good things.
They'll talk about her pretty girlish face and slender fingers
writing the tales of a youthful woman trying to break up with solitude, though it lured her back like a toxic kiss time and time again.
They'll shed tears about the 'almost' in the stories of a man, or men, that never became anything tangible, anything real enough to call Love. A love that was hers.
She was destined to be loved on the side. She was a gorgeous moment in their lives, like a flash of lightening, or a first dance at dusk.
Not the blue in the sky that stays through sunset to sunrise. Not the dance that ends the night into forever.

They'll think, what a shame, such a pretty young thing with a strange mind, old and alone to die without knowing what it is to be loved in return.

They'll wonder why. Why couldn't they stay to love her?

and She'll answer:

I was an undertow waiting beneath the ocean that mesmerized and lured many. When they realized the mess that lived inside my soul and showed fear of all the directions I wanted to go, I released them back to the shore. I never asked them to stay and they never swam into the sea again.

Then they'll know how she was desperately alone underneath all the golden laughs of her youth.
How this old woman was never meant for anyone in this world.