Second Place Winner: Sue McIntyre   Midlife Part 2 Like the raspberry cotton underpants I just bought at Walmart, I've suddenly discovered that my life is one size too big. But I can't return it, now that I've opened the package, so I'm keeping it. You'd think by now I'd have grown up. The rest of the girls who left their virginity on red shag rugs beside rumpus room pool tables with Aerosmith playing on the console stereo have learned to love Picasso-puzzle lives. They've settled down into tidy-tucked routines, crisp-ironed balance sheets, fitting the pieces into landscapes of loyalty and compromise. After too many years of being the sensible one, the lucky one who gets things right the first time, I find myself skulking about, long past the deadline for second chances. Like some furtive shape-shifter, a tragically-looping humpty-dumpty falling cracking and mending, falling cracking and mending, falling cracking and mending. Until that last time, when the cat and the fiddle stole my thumbs and fed them to the pumpkin eater. So I'm left sitting on a three-legged chair. Concentrating on the leg that's missing. Forgetting it's the ones I still have that are holding me up. Indulging in orgies of imagination. Peering down ermine worm-holes, best left unexplored, but so totally compelling, I fear I'll go there anyway. So I say to myself, you will be okay. Please excuse me, while I pull over to change a tire. It's okay if you think I'm a phoney or a liar, when I say, everything will be okay. Maybe this is just some artistic form of self-psychiatry. In the absence of an EMT, I'm massaging my own reckless heart, savouring the evidence of self-destruction. I won't ask you to stand like an oak while I exorcise my demons at your feet. Subject you to a solo recitation of my shortcuts and slipping self-control. I'll just drive away as quickly as I can. Do no more damage. The girls at the 25 year reunion are cradling Picasso babies and singing kumbaya, while I froth and curse and punch paper walls, looking for a picture so real I could just walk into it and disappear. Please excuse me while I stop to say (enough times 'till believe it too) everything is okay everything is okay everything is okay...Please excuse me.   Back to Feb/05 Winners Home