The Great Depression

English class was spent talking about the Great Depression.  It's background for reading Of Mice and Men.  It all feels too close to home.  The teacher uses a Powerpoint of old photos.  They leave me feeling bleak and empty inside.  I'm an old leather work boot dumped into hot water to flavor a questionable soup.

As one photo of poverty and despair fades into the next, I imagine stills from my own life.  Sometimes my expression has matched those of the people in the photos.  In their faces I see pieces of myself.  They look back at me with my own eyes.  This kinship with the antique poor is a heavy one to bear.

This burden presses down on me.  These are moments of lead.  The desire to lift this weight by telling the tale of its existence is especially strong.  I want to stand before the room and free myself with a simple act of expression.  
"Hello, my name is Carol.  I carry the heavy burden of poverty."
In my mind, the room embraces me.
"Welcome, Carol" they all say.
But this is only in my mind.  No one really knows my secret.

As I leave the classroom, I tell the teacher, "You know it's not so different now."
Yes," she says but it's just a polite off-putting consent.  With an awkward glance, she keeps the dam of words from breaking.  I say something meaningless and walk away.  I feel more empty than I did before.

The words I can not say aloud still press and surge within me.  I remember the images of the poor and how their faces were frozen in a singular moment.  Might they have smiled or laughed some moments before or after their faces were captured forever in time?

I fight to accept the fact that the void separating me from them no longer exists.  The memory of the lines etching their expressions opens into the deep canyons of my heart.  Some where from within the depths, I hear:
"That which does not kill me makes me stronger." (Nietzsche) http://www.blurtit.com/q689809.html I mutter a soft curse at these words and damn them to an eternity in hell.  A fitting end for something that opens onto fields of great pain.

More words float up from below:"This is the hour of Lead--, remembered if outlived"   (Dickinson Poem 341) http://www.shepherd.edu/transweb/amherst.htm I cling to these new words as if they were my only life line.  I climb over them, struggling to find a way out of the pain and darkness that a few old photos have opened up.  I curse them, the darkness, poverty.  Anger and loss wash over me.  They baptize me with fire.  From the ashes, I slowly rise.  "This too, shall pass,"  I say to myself.  "This will pass."

I paint a smile on my face.  I will not match those photos expressions.  That costs too much when I have so little left to lose.  Survival may depend on a single smile.  Inside, I give the one-finger salute to fate and begin the fight against the odds.
"No photos today, please.
No photos today."