From within a small rabbit hole, a black liquid burped up from the earth. It was hot and sticky and thick like molasses, smelling of sulphur and honey. From the hole, the black tar spread like an army of ants across undulating lime-tinted, spring grasses, grabbing the tender sheaves, and pulling them down like a wet comb through unruly hair. A misty rain fell from one large white cloud that hovered above the field. On the horizon at the farthest edge of the field walked an old woman, dressed in many loose layers of ripped cloth. Her gnarled toes touched the tar as she gently placed a foot down The heat spread between her toes and warmed her soles. The door was faint to her age-weakened sense of smell, and what lingered was not the sulphur but only the honey.
She missed the sound of bees. She missed horses in the field. She missed flowers and the houses and neighbors..all of it. But after walking over 100 years, she knew to expect nothing, be startled by nothing. She didn’t look back, she never looked back, but behind her the blackened earth was curling like old paper into a roll, the fullness of the roll at her back like a tsunami. She walked because she wanted to go home, back to her beginnings, to leave all the struggle and loneliness, all the disappointment and hardship, all the tears and sadness. And even if home was a tar ground that offered her nothing, she needed to reach that place she once knew, that place where she was true to herself, was only herself, unaltered by the demands of life and others, by her spirit which gave too much and left her depleted, to find again her heart, and mind, and soul, to find again herself. Two years it took her to march across that field. She ate only the berries dropped from the sky that landed in her begging hands. Eventually, she arrived at a place where light fell upon her through a hole in the white cloud, and she knew she was near. The land around her was the same as all the land she had covered over the last two years, and yet this location felt familiar. When she heard a voice coming from the earth, or was it a voice?, she looked down. A wolf’s nose was poking through the black liquid. After over 100 years, she stopped for the first time. She put her foot to the wolf’s nose. His mouth opened and he took her foot inside his mouth, and then her leg, and then all of her. His mouth shut. She was home.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Not really a BiographyI have always been inclined to move forward, roll the stone, down, and often up, hills. I've tried to write through it all. Everything on this blog is written by me. Archives
January 2023
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly