Justifications

Her face sunken in. We're all wondering if she's dying. Sick from something. Her family sick on something. The sixty year old little sister. Always the incompetent. Always the inferior. Less successful. Tragic stories of mediocrity filling pages of a deteriorating memoir. We all ask why she's losing so much weight and if she's been to the doctor. Decomposition setting in on all fronts. Big Sis's only response....

"No, she's starving to death. They haven't got any food down there."

"Then, why don't you help her out? She's your sister."

"I'm not feeding her two kids and her grandchild, too!"

She's not even half the world away. She's thirty miles down the highway yet completely out of reach. Visits her sister at least once a week. They share a cup of coffee; it's all her stomach can hold, shrunken as it is.

"Have you lost weight?"

She smiles, seemingly pleased with her "accomplishment." "I have, but I didn't think that anybody noticed."

She's a world away from salvation. She comes to its edge every week with physical evidence confessionals. Sits right there on that couch; on the edge, in case she must make a hasty retreat when her welcome has worn itself thin and out. An entire world away now. She'll never recover.

Help is on its way away.