What the [Bleep] Have I Done?

A friend moved up to our rural neck of the woods a couple of years ago so she could take the psych-tech training course at a local state facility. She moved up from the city at five years of sobriety, intending to start life over.
But moving disrupts life, and starting over takes time. She battled loneliness and second thoughts for a year and a half, but she completed the training, and school turned into a job she has a feeling for.
It takes a while to build a new network of friends and a support system. She trudged that road, some days wishing she could run off, screaming. But she never gave up.
I wrote this poem in her honor on her birthday:

What the [Bleep] Have I Done?


She stands in a 10 x 10 cell
and stares at the cheap walls
the narrow bed the tiny window
through which wild turkeys plod
more dirt than days out there
in this godforsaken place

She the mistress of pearls
Ferrari, backstage rock stars
She with the Fendi
alligator shoes cashmere coat
mink slung around her neck

with nothing now but turkeys
coyotes, dirt, no room
for all those clothes
the crystal left behind
in the city of angels

Exchanged for this cell
this prison training school
this hell of a new life

Time passes. Tears fall
get sucked up wiped off
The cell slowly undergoes
a transfiguration
becomes the cocoon
where she rests from the labor
of being born again

Time passes. Tears fall
get sucked up wiped off
wings emerge
she rests from her labor
wings emerge
open, close, open, close

And off she lifts
without her pearls
no cashmere coat
but glowing wings
whiter than pearls
winging her way
to freedom

Photo credit: butterflynature.com