Epiphany
written by: Coleen van Staden
@coleenvanstaden
I read between the lines
of your face
and find things once hidden from me
plain as day
The words we never spoke now ring more true
than any vows we said
or any song we called our own
You glow in the dark
and by the light I peel back layers of our life together
to reveal
in one pure moment
your betrayal
My love, this moment of knowing is exquisite
and a sweet comfort to me
I see the beginning of a smile
where your breath once played
I put the gun down gently
to take a closer look.
Coleen van Staden
I am lover of words thanks to my mother and her wonderful bedtime stories. No Hans Christian Anderson for me – I got four stanzas a night of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” alternating with Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”. I fell headlong into this world of words. I wrote poetry at school – didn’t we all. Never able to get more than 30% for High School Math I was lucky enough to take Literature instead as a Matriculation subject and it is here that I found my happy place. Blake and Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Wilde, Austen and Steinbeck were food for the soul and in my twenties and thirties I loved and devoured books by Anthony Burgess, Lawrence Durrell, Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, John Irving, Alistair Maclean, Douglas Adams and Robertson Davies. Now, in my late sixties, I like to remain active and continue to share the love for as long as I can. I do drama coaching for learners at a school in a disadvantaged area of Cape Town, South Africa.
