Forest walk with me

Permission slip signed, you packed lunch for this field trip, this walk in the forest. You imagine it will be like the time when you walked along a rushing river and slid down a slippery bank, saved by the root of a nearby tree.  Lovely sights, small adventure, memories scented with sweet flower water. 

This is not like that.

First of all, you’re alone and you weren’t supposed to be. Darkness heaves and in such darkness, it is impossible to see where anything begins or ends. Your hands gently touch each other even as they are touched by everything here.  Do you know where you end?

Soft pine needles cushion and call. Come to me. Crawl. You follow the hunger of your hips, heed the snake sliding up your spine.

Breath in, ribs open.  Fragrant nectar drips from within, beckoned forth by a pulse that is not your own.  Womb, belly, and heart bleeding out onto the forest floor. Offering. Becoming.

A lioness called you to a cave once, swiped at your hand to get you closer to the ground. While this is not her natural habitat, you feel her again in this darkness, calling you back.  

More than the artist

Unclothed, not really nude though, seated, spread, reclining, contorted, or stretched.  You’ve participated in art before.  Rooms full of people, seeing you but not seeing you, as it should be. You’ve seen what goes into their creations. You’ve seen them create.  You’ve felt their tight hold on your throat, fist punching through a canvas to strike you, grip you.

This is not like that.

You hear the wave before you see it, big, the kind that would be fun to run from if you were dressed for it. A chorus, which is weird because you’re here to see a soloist.  Silence, no sound at all, which is also weird because this is one place that cannot be silent.  Stillness, air captured and held for just a moment.  You think everything is suspended but maybe it’s just you.  The coin has been flipped and is neither heads nor tails, you’re in the slice between them both.  Or you are both heads and tails at once.

This art isn’t finished, won’t ever be finished.  This artist left the paint and brushes out for others. Forty pairs of hands reach out and bruise you without doing any harm.

Days later, but only moments, the tickle of soft grass on the back of your legs, ashes swirling at a pace too slow for your eyes to perceive.  Legs folded, your thighs seek the caress of another and do not find it. Untouched, solitary, but not alone.

Ribbons, always ribbons, this time black and smooth and silky.  Deep below, they rise to meet you. Riding the wave of what pulses inside of you - blood, lymph, life - they whisper up, like fingers walking, to a path you do not know.  

Vessel.  Only the memory of silk remains.