The Beautiful Stranger

Someone asked me how my “spirit” was today.

And, I can’t ever recall anyone in my life ever asking me that before.

It caught me by surprise -unawares — off guard. It scared me, quite honestly.

And, it scared me because I already knew the answer but hadn’t yet had the courage to acknowledge, much less say out loud, which was, very simply this:

Broken. My spirit was (is) broken. Much as Emily Dickinson had once written, “Hope is the thing with feathers” — my hope had long since been silenced.