she speaks to the forest . . .

the forest is breathing - shuddering as the wind passes through. she stops and waits. she stops and listens.

“why?” she whispers, and her legs tremble as she anticipates, knowing that with their response will come knowledge and completeness.

she waits and the light fades from the sky turning the blue to gray and the gray to black. the air is cold – the silence colder.

the forest surrounds her, the silence holds her. she waits in stillness, torn between a carbonic pull toward the work she feels sure her body was designed to do and an awake-ness scratching at the blurry edges of her consciousness.

is she more than her body? is she more than carbon and air? she whispers her questions - they hang in the air, and there is no answer. the forest is silent, the trees jealously keeping their knowledge to themselves and she knows her waiting is futile.



“why are you silent?” she asks the forest. "why aren't you answering? please share the things that you know." she feels like she is pleading, begging for answers to questions her mind has only begun to pose.

she watches them for a moment longer, their twiggy fingers reaching for the sky, and she remembers her own words whispered upward. she remembers a plea for clarity and justification. she recalls watching the breath roll out of the sky, and the silence that followed, and she knows. the forest holds no answers. like her, the trees are searching, grasping at nothing but the limitless sky’s infinite stoicism.

…she speaks to the forest.