In micro-season of greater summer, when one day it can rain heavy in fall and by next earth is dust again, they walked the trail under cover of woods, each step raising light the earth dusting air and boots.
She noticed the minute, curl of fallen leaves to ground, vein-spread through living still on limb; temples of ants in mark of burrows where they dug and made their homes—civilizations beneath surface and the sun.
He didn’t know why, but he wanted to say, thinking on a thought, and did.
“My mind’s often been a mess of thoughts. Some days, it still is, scribbles and overlaps of patterns and ways that never cleared or found escape. I folded myself away, heart and all, and that was the depression—not expressing what, who, I was; as God meant for me to be.”
She listened, no judgment in his tone, only empathy of lived known. Diverting from directness, she looked on world through focused lens, taking picture of minute—column-temple of the ants and a worker with piece of earth raised high in jaw.
“Writing gave me a medium, a way to let it through. Maybe you’ll find your medium too. Life is better in joy; when we realize we can recognize and make space for all—then let it go—and allow ourselves to feel and live beyond whatever it is that sometimes has a way to draw us down.
I don’t know why I wanted to say that—just did,” and with that he let it die knowing fixing and keeping thought upon would only make it worse—bring the shadow back to feel.
She raised her eyes from the low of the earth, from micro-temples of hidden worlds beneath the earth, and raised her eyes to him.
“Thank you,” simple words, plain response, sincere and truly meant.
No longer focused in tunnel of lense, she noticed details and differences in bark of the many trees, every ash that died in season before and threshold of the emerald borers killing all in stand, and too the living woods—oaks and beech and hickories, great sycamores in low and nooks of creekside bends running full in rain from day before.
She noticed the light through canopy’s fall, yellow’s become of amber through edge and thin of leaves that glowed, and in the shadow, she no longer felt a darkness.
This had been his hope.