from eden
There was a large oak tree, with strong, arching branches that lifted their chins towards the sky, waiting for kisses from the sun. Its leaves fluttered coyly like lashes, and breathed in the sweet, sticky air of summer with a thousand diaphanous nods. It almost always felt like summer, accompanied by the far-echoing giggles of little children, until the leaves began carpeting the ground with a maple rust, and then, it felt like autumn. Snow never followed; the children had never seen snow before, satiated as they were with diving into the softness of giant leaf bales. They pittered and pattered over the damp earth, sprawled across makeshift beds, puffing out from red cheeks and brushing down wild hair, and stared giddily at cloud tufts in the sky. Ferns cascaded from crags in the trunk, resembling emerald waterfalls, as moss dusted over gnarled ridges. Where green ended, a rich, majestic wood continued, losing none of its stateliness, even when sweaty rosebuds of adolescent palms scratched initials into its bark. There were promises of interlinked hearts and friendships and hallowed dates with angular digits. Most of all, there were permutations of alphabets, clipped declarations that in their young minds had seemed important and immutable,- symbols of a lost civilization that had not yet begun to imagine its own mortality. Sunlight streamed down at the same spot, exactly, as it had for many years, wreathing the oak tree with a golden glow. Shadows swelled and shrank, and toadstools learned to grow well within their silhouettes. In the spring, when leaves were hard sprouts, the branches remained bare and brown and naked, before bursting forth into viridescence. The children looked at the tree in bright-eyed anticipation from the classroom window every single day, excitement gushing from cherry lips: "it is green again!", "look over there!", "let's go!". They scampered over the hills with fleshy feet, nearly falling over one another,- head to heels, shoulder to cheeks- and scuffled over who gets to climb the tree first, who gets to go on the plain sturdy swing first. The brash ones kicked their soles high into the air with well-timed spikes; the gender ones calmed their rioting hearts by whispering along with sympathetic leaves. A palette of salmon and saffron, olives and old lavenders dappled the horizon every twilight. The hours melted like caramel, and the oak tree rose ever more, proudly yet gently towards an eternity it understood, but did not crave.
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I write love-letters to things that I have never seen, nor smelled, nor heard, but have only felt. I used to think that this was the singular manifestation of love, that one could only truly love something if they never had it. There was always more to imagine, the less one is limited by experience. It is the coward's way out, and it is not enough to love in a dream.
That is not my reality, nor will it ever be. That is okay. Eventually. Slowly, surely, over the years, I have been awakening from my childhood, soaked in Anglo-Saxon images and ideals, and realizing that that life is not for me to lead. And that is okay.
This is my reality: hazy, parched, manicured mushrooms, concrete, cotton, hulking steel, exhaust gases, fairy lights in cooled rooms, truffle fries, coloured plastic tables, cured meats sopping with oil, fluttering hearts on a screen, downy pillows, smileys, late-night gurgles, pretty skies sometimes, evening runs, chicken rice, granola on greek yoghurt, photographs, reading about 19th century shipwrecks, bougainvilleas, symmetry, stability, possibility,- pluripotency.
And HT.
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I write love-letters to things that I have never seen, nor smelled, nor heard, but have only felt. I used to think that this was the singular manifestation of love, that one could only truly love something if they never had it. There was always more to imagine, the less one is limited by experience. It is the coward's way out, and it is not enough to love in a dream.
That is not my reality, nor will it ever be. That is okay. Eventually. Slowly, surely, over the years, I have been awakening from my childhood, soaked in Anglo-Saxon images and ideals, and realizing that that life is not for me to lead. And that is okay.
This is my reality: hazy, parched, manicured mushrooms, concrete, cotton, hulking steel, exhaust gases, fairy lights in cooled rooms, truffle fries, coloured plastic tables, cured meats sopping with oil, fluttering hearts on a screen, downy pillows, smileys, late-night gurgles, pretty skies sometimes, evening runs, chicken rice, granola on greek yoghurt, photographs, reading about 19th century shipwrecks, bougainvilleas, symmetry, stability, possibility,- pluripotency.
And HT.