Chapter 11: Tales from my Trailer Haven

I stood back to look at my sketch and noticed something was blatantly missing. All the pieces were there, but all the pieces needed to be pieces, as if I had taken a ceramic mug and thrown it on the floor. I grabbed some scissors and cut the whole sketch into pieces with swift, sharp cuts, the numbing pain stabbing me with every clip-clip of the steel scissors. Thin, pointed spears penetrated my tunnel vision. Jagged triangles of varying sizes flashed into my mind and body, and settled on soulful memories of my newspaper headline, “Golf Instructor in a League of Her Own.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as shards of shadowed paper clippings fell onto my bed. Shattered dreams complete. My hands trembled when I glued each piece of paper back onto the poster board. One by one, I dripped the white goop onto the backs of the clippings, careful to smear the glue to all edges. Methodically, I placed them with unwavering focus in their resting spots. Time disappeared as I continued to place each strip of paper. I was transfixed as the scarecrow’s head reappeared with his braided rope choker and crooked stupor eyes. The lost time-heart was complete, with a pointed shard protruding the right ventricle. The hand of authority seemed even larger now as impending black clouds signaled a storm.

The sly fox was very much intact and was lying low, camouflaged and resting deeply. This was the fragmentation of my mind and my life. The sketch depicted it completely now. (See Figure 1: Illusions—misspelled as “Illiusions” on the sketch.) I placed my pencil back on the lamp table and sat contently on the couch. Gazing out the window, I viewed a blurred rose garden and a shimmer of light.