Tuesday, January 07, 2020

Wanderer

Brief, tiny memories - the kind that prove that the space between moments is infinitely divisible. Because those were all that remained, it was easy to believe you were both more and less than you actually were.  Larger than life, certainly stronger, and still too smooth to be real.  Like one of the stones you collected and polished.  Ridges and indentations show how and where something has been and you had neither, just like those stones.  A ghost of something once real, maybe.

Grief and heartache and wounds without names create folklore out of failures, misfires, and accidents.

What if you were just passing through?

Your walk was brisk, you had places to go.  Your hunt is never over - there is always something to kill, you just have to know the seasons and you know them very well.  The remains of a crisp, tart apple in your hand, you turned to the west and tossed the core.  You saw blazing reds and oranges paint a fire in the sky as the core hit the rich dirt - it was a sunset, time and direction told you that.  You continued on your way, you had places to go.   The colors stayed.  Their heat bled into the earth as they faded. You didn’t think about the apple core or what happened to it.  Why would you?  Your boot prints in the ground might have led to responsibility and accountability but you knew to walk the land just before the rain.  You knew how to become a ghost even then.

What if you were never meant to stay because you never did?

The apple tree that grew out of that place does not remember you, just the memory of a wish.  Stories abound of how it came to be there, none of them true.  They are all more and less grand than is real, like your ghost.
  

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