Prompt: Exodus

Leaving a hard life.

In need, in need. Survival mode indeed. Can’t breathe.

Waiting for money. Waiting for food. The mood, the mood. Husband went crazy. Need to feed my brood.

Found a helpful friend. Transitional home. Food and shelter and recovery time. Food each day, no worry, sublime.

Lived there a year among sixty residents. Personality clashes building confidence.

Children to school, while husband slept. Too heavy on medication, I never wept.

Had to focus now on how to survive. Get out of this place at my own pace.

A lot of programs to fill our needs. A lot of work from me and good deeds brought salvation into focus.

Computer learning helped me to excel. Got a job and had to go soon. Had to compel myself and my family to leave this place. Change our pace from that to a more normal space.

A car was donated. Some benefits came in. Life looking better and on a good spin. Homelessness gone. Never to be touched on again.

Apartment life, schooling, driving, working surviving once again.

I am normal and real and life will never steal this from me again.

Jo Ann Harris is an author, parent, book devotee, writer, copywriter, and film fanatic. She is an autodidact who learns about everything and rows her own boat. She grew up and worked in Atlanta, Georgia and lived there sixty years. She writes articles about love, hope, personal life stories, advice and poems. She is a published author with an article published in Woman’s World magazine in October, 2017. You can read more of her work in her publication on Medium named Poems From The Heart by Jo Ann or just go to her profile page.