The Way Back Home

The trail rounds a bend, and I spy a granite wall. Inside that wall there is a cave. Inside that cave lies darkness. I have returned. I smell her. I smell him. I smell them. They call to me with the wind through the trees. Their voices sound from the gurgle of a small creek coursing downhill over mossy stones. They call me home.

Leaves fall around me from the tall maples, oaks, and hickories. Across the stream, a dervish of pine straw sweeps through the shady dark trunks of a patch of slash pines.

I don’t belong here.

I look at my hands. I see my wedding band. I shake the watch I received as a gift from my eldest daughter on my too-skinny wrist. I remember my girls. I remember their hair, their smell, and their laughter. I inevitably remember they are gone. I note my fingernails and how clean they are. I turn my hands over and touch the bumpy line running up my arms. That line is ugly and purple and seems to grow larger every year. I remember a crimson river collecting as a cloudy delta in the ocean of my bathtub.

I don’t belong here.

But it started here. I think. I don’t know because it was all so long ago. It seems a nice enough place for it to end, all the same.

I hear birds sing a song and know the words. Some people might say they are not words, but those people would be wrong. There is meaning. That’s all words are in the end. Songs convey meaning. Music carries emotions. The forest has a song all its own. That song is nothing if not meaningful.

A shock of cold creeps up my leg. I look down. I see myself walk into the stream. My pants grow dark with creeping moisture. Chill bumps rise on my arm. A shiver slinks down my spine. Overhead, a trio of crows caws as they leap from branch to branch to branch. A flurry of leaves, nuts, and pinecones shower down in their wake.

I hear a rustle and see something dark and large – A bear? A deer? A mountain lion? A wolf? A troll? A dragon? – creep through a patch of underbrush. Twigs rattle in the wake. There’s a growl or a cry or a laugh; it is hard to tell the difference. I think I see fresh hoof prints outlined in mud. Worms wriggle up and fill the dark indentations like anemones.

I don’t belong here.

My daughter had been a little girl once. She sat on my knee. She held my hand and dragged me around everywhere as little girls are wont to do with their daddies. I let her carry me. I thought I was the parent. I thought I was in charge. I thought I was the protector. I thought I was keeping her safe and sound. I never dreamed she was the only thing keeping me from being lost. That’s what I am without her: lost. I need her hand in mine so I don’t slip away.

I trudge forward through the creek. I splash as I lose my footing. I slip on moss and algae. I scrape my hands. Loose moss sinks beneath my fingernails. My arms are slick and white with cold. My teeth chatter, but I hardly recognize this. I don’t feel the cold even though it eats at me and sends my pulse into a frenetic fury.

I come closer to the cliff I first saw when coming around the bend. The gurgle of water becomes a roar. I look up and see the waterfalls. They cascade down from above. Beneath the base of the falls, I can just make out the dark outline of the cave. The walls on either side of the opening appear soft and languorous, worn smooth by an eternity of erosion.

I don’t belong here.

I look back behind me and realize I am on a rise. This is a natural overlook. Below me, a river snakes through a valley. A city sits on the bank of that river. Cars drive on streets. Children play on playgrounds. Adults sit in offices or work construction. It is Halloween. Once the sun sets, the carved pumpkins will be alight with fire. Families will take to the streets with glow sticks and bags for candy. People will smile and visit and knock on each other’s doors. They might not knock on each other’s doors any other time during the year, but they will on that night. At least the children will. The adults will hang back and watch from the curb or sidewalk or simply stay at home while getting drunk and watching horror movies.

I always liked Halloween. But not this year. Not last year. Not the year before.

Every little girl, no matter the costume, looks just like my little girl. I find myself wondering if she might be underneath that wig? That make-up? That mask?

I belong here.

The cascading water slows and then stops. Lingering puddles in the rock drip. The birds stop their song. The crows land next to me. They stand silent and regard me with obsidian eyes.

A tree falls behind me, then another.

A dragon sweeps by blowing smoke and fire.

A troll rides on the dragon’s back. The troll picks its nose and laughs. It sings a song whose words are meaningless and untrue. I hate that troll.

The dragon knocks the cliff with a spiked tail. I’m not sure if the action was on accident or on purpose. I doubt that it matters. The impact of the beast against the cliff breaks the stone apart. Rocks fall around me. It grows dark. I am buried. Water seeps through cracks above me. I relent. The chill overtakes me until there is no chill, only numbness.

I touch the scars on my forearms. They vibrate and pulse. I dig in with my hands until I can feel myself. Pink light erupts from my torn skin and muscle. This blushing illumination lights my way. I dig and dig. My hands grow wet. I will keep digging until I find myself, until I find my way back home.

The Trees

Look at my arms. They are scaling and falling to pieces. Shards of bark fall like my autumn leaves, multicolored and fading. Look at the veins in my leaves. How brittle they are. Once these hands ran through your hair, and now I no longer have hands. I am incomplete.

Once we knew love. Once we knew each other. Once we touched and came together.

Now we are no longer what we were.

I look at you: A rotting stump. Crickets hide inside you and sing.

I stand still. The air is stagnant. I soak in the sun. I soak in the rain. I stand unmoving.

My arms are branches.

You don’t even have that luxury. You can no longer reach up to the sky. You are there, in the ground, rotting. Salamanders call you home.

Birds make their nests on my arms. I hold them tight and protect them from storms. I watch the young birds leap from their nests. Some take flight while others fall.

At my feet lie the bones of broken birds. They no longer sing. Yet, they still serve their purpose as food for ants and maggots. These things are necessary, too, no matter how unpleasant they might be.

You are necessary. You feed the earth. You feed termites.

I stand above and shelter you in my shade. I remember you as you were, as you used to be. When we touched and merged as figures of warm flesh and love. I remember the afterglow. I remember your green shoots and flowers.

I’m sorry I cut you down.

Sometimes.

But now I am old and the termites infest me. I feel them crawl past my bark and into the deepest of my many rings. Each ring is a year of life, and there are so many years. How many was it before I cut you down? I can’t remember. Not that it matters. You sit there and rot, and I will join you soon. I know this to be true. The sun will be hidden from me as the other trees surround us and hide us in their shade.

Kudzu moves in, and mistletoe steals the rain from my soul.

I am so thirsty. My roots are nibbled by moles and rabbits. My tangled wooden subterranean knots are now the home of a nasty family of gnomes.

The sky cries for me, but the tears offer no relief. I am drying from the inside.

I am just like you.

Once we were more than trees. You were more than a stump. You were everything.

Now I stand alone.

My last leaf has fallen, and the sound of termites crunching wood overwhelms my senses. I feel myself crack and break, little by little.

Lightning flashes, and I thank God for fire.

The Jogger & The End of Everything &

I. The Jogger

Leaving the red and heat-scorched road behind, he veered down the trail into the shadows of the forest, grateful for the respite from the sun’s relentless burn. Tall, slender pines swayed with a breeze. Cicadas sang. Off in the distance, he heard the ancient warning of the rattlesnake, but he ignored the primal fear rising on the periphery of his senses. The bulk of his focus placed on his pulsating heart and the steady beat of his feet hitting earth as he jogged. The wilderness was just a passing landscape: a fading entity less real than the internal thrum of blood pumping through veins.

The humidity pressed down upon him. His sweat-stained shirt stuck to his chest and back. He felt movement all around, but shrugged it off, assuming it was the flock of wild turkeys he knew frequented this forest. There was a rustle in the wild blackberry bushes lining the path, but he left it behind without giving it any thought.

The kudzu laughed as it entwined itself along the trunks and branches, an exotic import dominating a new home. Dragonflies gathered together, forming thick clouds which hummed with the beat of millions of lacy and translucent wings. The ghosts of empires long gone – hidden beneath centuries of ancient hard-wood forests which preceded the current pines – whispered riddles in languages lost and forgotten.

And he jogged, oblivious to it all.

The mystery surrounded him, shimmering like heat waves on asphalt. There are windows into other worlds and realities that all too often go unnoticed as we run past them at a relentless pace. He left his past to find a temporary present sparing no thoughts for the darkness ahead.


II. The End of Everything


“We are nearing the end,” she said. Her hair shimmered beneath the sun as it waved, wind-swept and disheveled. I had never seen her look more beautiful.

“The end of what?” I asked as I pushed the throttle forward. The boat sped up and I squinted despite my sunglasses because the sun was magnified and fractured by the ripples all around us.

“The end of everything.” She smiled at me, her teeth fell from her mouth, and her beauty melted. She aged and degraded from beauty queen to corpse to dust, and then she blew away.

The lake became primordial ooze, and it stunk. It stunk with the rot of life, the stench of reproduction, a hint of honeysuckle beneath it all. With the stench there was beauty, the promise of spring, the rebirth from the wreckage. Roses fertilized by manure.

The vision passed quickly like a summer storm and I saw her again. Smiling and beautiful, she rubbed a swelling and exposed belly pulsating with new life as she lounged on the padded seat next to me in her maternity bathing suit.

“Or is it the beginning?” I asked.

III.

Beneath open skies, flowers bloom and sway with a delicate breeze while casting shadows in silence.