What Love Really Is
©2003 Elizabeth L. Clark

A little girl, barely ten years old, stood beneath the moon. One arm supported cracked ribs, the other hand pressed a tissue to a split and bleeding lip. She looked up, lashes glistening with tears and whispered.

"Help me live and find out what love really is."

That same girl, now fourteen, looked up to the moon again. Her body wracked with pain, her innocence torn asunder by a man that paid for the privilege, her whisper hoarse with sobbing. "Please help me to live and find out what love really is."

Now twenty-five, she gazed up once more. Her ears rang with her husbands shouts and her body ill from his unwanted touches. She pleaded now. "Please, please let me live and find out what love really is."

Forty and her body and face showed the passage of years. She looked up to the gleaming moon and her eyes danced with joy and peace. She held the hand of a woman. A woman with dark gentle eyes and hands that only touched her with love, never with anger. She whispered happily and thankfully. "Thank you for letting me live and find out what love really is."