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128 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2024
There was a row of crab apple trees at the top of the trail, sturdy and mangled with age, and I climbed onto one of the lower branches to look out at the vista. He turned toward me to say something, and as he did, I caught his hand. I didn’t understand why. A thrilled impulse. He moved closer, as though this was intended all along. In an instant, the levity from our walk extinguished under irreversible fog. We stayed there pressing each other against the crab apple tree, until the bark dug into my back and the sun fell from dark orange to gray. I didn’t see him again, and crafted a series of lies to cover up the evening.
Not even nature, in its stillness and silence, could pull me out of myself in any lasting way. Even after days when I was grateful to be surrounded by its complexity and beauty, and would experience weightlessness and relief, I would still retreat, hours later, within my rattled body, unable to bring nature inside. I turned to face myself and it failed. There was still a door in me, and I kept it shut.
A presence shook me; it was strong and wild, shattering enough to place at the front of something. I became small and unnoticeable, but it was a smallness where something wonderful surged around me. The smaller I became, the more I could see it. Like a fractaling reveal, tying my days together with a single thread. I crinkled down into the sand. I felt the squint the happens when one is staring directly into the sun, but it was my entire body squinting at love… The shock turned to ecstatic giddiness. Who could I tell this to? I thought. God’s touch!