You Weren’t There On The Mountain

I’m like a child, the way my mind works. I want us to look at each other, but I keep covering my eyes.

I had abandoned all intelligence seeing as it got the world nowhere. Maybe in a good world, with good people, advancements would forward us and make us more humane, lessen suffering, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and so on.

But put knowledge in the hands of a brute and he grows ever crueler.

Isn’t it a shame that our empathy can be one sided? That we notice the wound of the beast first, and bleed with him, while his eyes are set on our swollen heads?

I fear looking into my adult eyes and not recognizing myself.

The touch of your coat as you trot on by.

The green of your eyes as you gaze at the sky.

The scratch of your claws as you knock on my door.

I miss that sound dearly

for I do not hear it anymore.

That is what they don’t understand. They think some external pressure is destroying me but it has always been myself. Only my finger tips know where on my belly is tender and bruised enough to burrow into.

Taken by the wind’s sweet pressure on my face, I am swept to the little church on the hill. Sugar atomized in the air; footsteps bringing life to the silent cedar floorboards, nothing felt simpler than there. My eyes are sealed as I soak in the feeling, finding a smile in the blustery darkness.

If there is nothing worthwhile in me, how do I go forward from here? How do I live as a creature and not the woman I thought I was?

Fires burn in the shape of mountains, mere miles from my porch step.

The vegetation cries in red and grey.

My feet in my front yard grass ground themselves there, against the peeking patches of dirt hiding beneath the stiff yellowing blades, as if nature itself is afraid to look at its destruction. I cannot look away.

Our dry seasons get drier, rain will become myth, and water legend. I wonder when it will be my turn to record the destruction, to tell others of what happened to me, and not hear of what happened to others. I wonder if that day will be today.

There is a kinder world within all of us, but we must agree to be as kind as it is to see it.