Waking Up

by Pam Murphy

In wonderment, I charged happily into my dream, humming as I went, my pink frill a safe distance from the ground. Without warning, I slammed into the clashing, self-preserving, silently-driven music of unfamiliar marches toward dreams I couldn't see or touch for the vividness of my own. How inexplicably my unacknowledged self-righteousness turned to self-loathing and doubt. I stopped moving, released the pink frill to fall where it may, and felt the awkwardness that only comes with epiphany. I am not alone. I am no longer the sun, and in dawning recognition I watch the mass of suns stalking the earth, unaware, and I feel the helplessness, the pompousness, of my shallow comprehension.

6S

Pam Murphy, mother of three teenagers, caregiver to four unrelated children, and recent college graduate, lives, loves, and works in Woodland, Alabama (a town most easily understood by placing a finger halfway between Atlanta and Birmingham on a map and squinting to read the fine print). She is currently researching MFA programs hoping to find a fit, working on her first novel, and looking for freelance work.