What Could Have Been

I wrote What Could Have Been one day when I was wondering what my birth mother was like when was 17. What is true is tha both my birth parents were 17 when I was born and my birth dad did work in construction. The rest is fiction and cosidering I was born in 1967 I not even sure heavy metal was around then. I still think it's a very powerful piece and I may add more to it at a later date. So without much futher ado I give you:

What Could Have Been

Windows cracked open let in a soothing summer breeze. We talk for hours about this and that including our future plans.We were so young we were that we had no idea that our dreams would turn to dust to be blown about by a not so gentle wind. I remember you wore a black tank top with cut off jean shorts and I wore a pink sundress that I worn so many times before the pink was fading to white. The stereo was blasting something heavy metal that had my mother screaming to turn it down. We laughed at her but turned it down anyway. I don't think smoking pot back then was the reason those days are so blurred together. I think it was that we were young and trying to live life faster than the speed of light. The faster you run away from yourself the sooner you face a stranger in the mirror. The stranger staring at me that summer was holding an positive EPT. You swore that you would be there for me and support me to the end. But promises like that are hard to keep when friends offer a chance to escape to a place where there are no pregnant girlfriends with babies on the way. At seventeen who wants to be a dad anyway. You like fast cars and fast girls but that takes money, lots of money. So I should not have been surprised when you took that construction job out of state that your dad offered you. My heart broke into a thousand pieces until I couldn't tell if it was from missing you or from wanting somewhere to run away from all that I was and all that I feared I would be. I heard the names that the other girls called not so far behind my back. Labels have a way of sticking with you no matter how hard you try to rip them off. Summer turned to Autumn then to Winter and on the coldest day of the year our baby was born. They told me it was a girl and she would probably survive even though she came six weeks premature. I had already signed the adoption papers so I never got to see her or hold in my arms. better that way I guess that you don't know really what you have lost. After several weeks I was healed enough to go any where and get out of this place to somewhere where people don't know me. Where I could spin any tale about my past and no one would know any different. Instead I stayed here perhaps hoping one you would come back or perhaps I was so tangled up in ribbons of dreams ripped apart that going away was never really a choice at all.