Turn The Page: Chapter Two, Heaven Can Wait

The page has turned as it was in flames while Terry allowed such a chapter in her life to be consumed by her cleansing flames of self determination.
     After abandoning the traffic median, her “island,” she never once glanced back towards the hell of her former life. “Heaven Can Wait,” Terry said aloud as she spotted a used syringe littered on the sidewalk along Union st.
     “The poor girl,” Terry whispered as she remembered Myra, another girl that begged on the same island but was less street’s smarts – Myra would hop into any car with a man for a promise of twenty dollars to do their business anywhere the local police won’t roll up on them.
     “Dead now for all I know,” Terry choked as she walked passed the syringe. She had not seen or heard from Myra since she was sharing a cigarette on the island and witnessed Myra’s eyes light up as she connected eyes with a man whose Terry had never seen before. Typical pickup for Myra. Myra handed the lit cigarette to Terry saying, “you can kill it!” Then she hopped into the man’s car and they drove off onto the onramp of 91 North. Into oblivion, Terry has thought since they last saw each other all those months ago. Myra’s sister once pulled up to Terry begging for answers, “where’s my sister, please!” Terry had no answer. As the terrible thought passed in Terry’s mind, she repeated herself aloud, “heaven can wait.” And a tear for her girl, Myra, flew down her face onto the creviced sidewalk. Then Terry paused and noticed the tear drop had landed right into the crack in the asphalt. “Perhaps a rose will grow and bloom for you, girl.”
     Her stomach growled and as it was empty, Terry remembered her father’s gentle smile when she was a little girl, when they would go out to the park and picnic. “Princess,” her father would say as he would tell her, “you know, mommy’s looking down her lil’ princess right now so proud, honey.”
     “Daddy?”
     “Yes, princess?”
     “Are there phone calls to heaven?”
     I remembered my father teared up when he answered, “there are no phone calls to heaven, princess. Mommy is with God and she’s a beautiful angel that will always watch over you.”
     That park today, no longer has thick, blue green grass but patchy, yellow grass and pools of muddy water. The branches of the trees fractured from their trunks. That park is now grounds for drug dealing and prostitution. From green pastures of heavenly light overhead, to the overcast of hellish, hopeless gloom.
     Heavenly memories remembered in the gloom of reality, Terry has no choice now but to keep locked that heavenly light within her still beating heart, of her father, her mother, the innocence that was her childhood.
     Terry glanced only once through the rusted, warped chainlink fence lining that park and again, without hesitation saying it aloud to the world, “heaven can wait.”