"Love this. Thanks for posting"

Dawn breaks across the room
shattering the darkness like a memory trapped
in the recesses of my heart.
Splinters glow red,
a minefield to walk through.
Away from you.
Or towards.

"Alright I can get on board with this one"

Carol was outside Walmart, loading bags into her car.  Her infant still strapped to her chest in a Baby Bjorn. It was mid-morning on a Wednesday, the last week of her maternity leave.  She had dropped her oldest daughter at school and then not knowing what to do with herself had driven 40 miles out of town to wander the store.  Picking up plates, bags of candy, a box of Lucky Charms.  The sound of her phone ringing startled her and she fumbled with the final bag before finding she had stashed her phone in her back pocket instead of in her purse.

"I just wanted to say that I am sorry." The voice said.  The baby asleep on her chest, a voice so familiar it needed no introduction.  She had no words.  They had spoken since the horrible night a decade ago when he had confessed his affair and she had packed a bag and walked out into the hot summer night.  Two months of coach surfing and finally a plane ticket to San Francisco where she had lived the next decade, re-building what he has taken from her.

"It will be the BEST GIRLS NIGHT EVER with lots of swearing and wine."

The popular girls grew up and moved away.  By the time Jane moved back home to raise her kids there was almost no one left that she had grown up with.  She had forgotten how hard it was to meet people and make friends.  She finally got to know some other moms when her son started pre-school and sitting in her living room while their kids played outside realized that all the other moms in the class had started a Facebook group to share when things were happening and schedule get togethers.

Jane felt the feeling in her gut that she remembered from high school.  When she was always just on the outside.  That even though she thought that she was saying the right things and smiling at the right times she was never welcomed into the inner circle.  All the effort she had put in to making connections, all the hope she had held out looking for a group of friends who she could share a glass of wine with solidified into a black rock inside her core.  She found herself calling for her son and making an excuse for needing to leave early.  As she pulled away from the house she vowed that she would never again seek out relationships from women.  She would have to be enough for herself.  Pulling herself inward the closer she got to home.