4.30.14 Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

  Does it dry up

  like a raisin in the sun?

  Or fester like a sore--

  And then run?

  Does it stink like rotten meat?

  Or crust and sugar over--

  like a syrupy sweet?

  Maybe it just sags

  like a heavy load.

  Or does it explode?

  -Langston Hughes- 'Harlem'

I've long savored the picture this poem draws in my mind. The image of a sticky piece of fruit, heavy with too ripe juices, drying out in the sun until it bursts and sends tiny seeds all around. This image is my hope.

There is a piece of my heart, very close to the center, that is still. It is coping. Sometimes it is sagging, sticky, and heavy. This piece of who I am is entwined with Aimee. It is the only way I know how to deal. 

I decide, I ask, I think, I feel for Aimee. Like a mother to her newborn baby, I give her my nurture, intuition, nourishment, and protection. The strands of my heart are connected to her, to my deferred hope.

Oh hope! Do not rot away inside my heart. Do not infect my being with disappointed resentment. Instead, seep, shrivel, and explode to every nearby heart. 

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. -Proverbs 13:12-