The Sky and I

When my shoes come into contact with the pavement beneath them, they make this small suction noise, it’s almost hidden beneath the sound of the rain on that same pavement. These shoes, I forgot, have a small hole in the side, water leaks in and air leaks out when it’s wet outside. The asphalt here is smooth, freshly paved, and properly thins out the water so the squelch isn’t so bad, the water on the road isn’t reaching the canvas of my shoes or the ankles of my pants. I don’t like it, I’m headed deeper, down a hill I’ve driven by a thousand times, and thought-- it would suck to get stuck in that ditch. I want to be stuck in that ditch now. My feet slip a little on the slick grass, but I don't mind, I’m not going to be vertical or dry for long the way I’m headed. At the bottom of the hill is a little ditch, dirt, not quite mud yet as the downpour is supposed to begin later. I take my shoes off, stuff my socks inside, and set them up neatly in the grass just outside this dirt ditch I’ve found myself in. When I curl my toes into the dirt, there’s no suction, no sound, just sensation. I crouch down to watch as the raindrops hit the earth, darkening it and changing the form of it, maybe if I pretend to be the earth it will change me too, I come from the same place the earth did, we have the same mother, may she bless me. Slowly, afraid I might disturb my own resting place, I lower my body to the ground, I spread my arms out as wide as they will take me, dig my heels in and stretch my head as far in the opposite direction as I can, try to pull my bones apart with my will. And then I rest. I open myself up to the rain. I hold my soul bear, sky and earth the only witness to my confessional. The purest confession, one without words, but with unbearable hope, I pray the rain may alter my form like the earth, and I am sorely disappointed when the rain falls to a mist, and then decides to remain in the clouds a while more.

When I rise, I can feel that it was not enough. Where the rain fell upon my clothes has changed, the moon wiped her light across the damp parts and left a shimmer in its wake, only visible when I turn. I turn and turn and turn, catching glimpses of a blessing not meant for me. The clothes, they have no choice, they cannot help but be. As they are made is as they will be, and the moon and sky sees their honesty and rewards them with temporary beauty. As I was made and formed I made choices, have hidden parts of myself inside myself, let them collect dust in the back of my ribcage. I’m trying to bring back a half remembered dream of a person I could be.

Behind the ditch lay a forest as far as any eye could see and farther than any imagination could stretch. I head into the trees with no shoes and no dignity, thinking maybe at the end of this half-cocked journey I’ll find myself some honesty. Why can’t I sleep at night, why does the loneliness crowd in my throat and burrow down deep, why do I kind of hate when it leaves. My feet find the pine needles on the ground, and let them prick, the wound gives way to jealousy. These live beings around me have lived a longer and more honest life than I could ever believe, and it has never cost them a thing. I would sell my soul for a quarter of the peace and none of the time, quality over quantity that’s what they say and what I believe. The feel of a life wasted pulls at me, my footfalls heavier on the forest floor and heart beating faster with every similar step. Time and rain have changed them here too, their boughs heavier and leaves greener, trunks stronger and bark lighter. Everything I have never been and will never be, even if I were ever lucky, it’s no lottery for me, just playing the same numbers every Tuesday at the same gas station for ten years, thinking the odds are in my favor more and more each day.

The moonlight is different here, it doesn’t just barely skim the earth the way it did earlier, here it seems to glide, long patches of silver resting on the ground, ruined the moment I come near them, but I am unable to resist and follow their trails to a small clearing, mostly taken up by a lonely pond. It sits like glass, barely any frame of shore to transition to dirt, just the water and the moon and me. When I approach the looking glass, I am surprised to see a face unlike my own staring back at me. This face in the glass is older, much older, and bitter, lips twisted in a foul way, eyes like pits reaching for me. I kneel at the side, and nearly skim my hand on the water as I look at her, but as my hand nears the surface, her hand appears too, and it is not the same color as the rest of her, it is darker, much darker, and strange. A profound sorrow rises in me when I recognize that it is blood on her hand reaching out to touch mine, that it is her blood, the blood of time and the blood of pain, the eyes of this being are reaching deep inside me for my mercy, and a tear slips out of my eye. I know as surely as I know myself that she will never find what she’s looking for as long as she searches inside me, and when we make eye contact I know she knows the same. But she searches all the same, and I let her. The more she searches inside me, the more my own pain begins to mute all sensation, afraid of how my mind would fare under the duress of its memories. My regret and pity hold knives towards this woman’s search, and though she wants none of it she receives it all, the sharpened edges making the same blood that runs into her cupped hands. Time walks along the way she always does, and the woman’s desperation slowly turns to frustration, she beats and pounds at the doors of my empathy, and I cannot tell because I am hiding my pain behind those doors too and without the pain there is only empty. This woman may search forever but there is nothing to find, the shifts of Time came by many years ago and scraped me clean, rubbed me raw. When I try to tell her so, the nothing comes out the way it always does, a noise of absence, there is nothing for me to say and so I do not. I give this woman the only thing I have left to give, the only mercy I have ever known, I let my nothingness ebb into her something, I start to take away all she has left, not for myself but for her and for the absence, her hands stop bleeding but there is something worse, the lines on her cheeks, forehead, and around her eyes disappear too, her scars leave her behind and the moon seeps in instead. She seems ethereal, there and not there too, a fragment of a dream left behind, a memory that never reached fruition. I am nothing at all if I am not her witness. The moon smooths out her reflection as Time continues on her way, and too soon she is gone, without a spirit to witness, I am nothing, and the glass shows me as much, I have lost my own face in the water below me.

My knees are damp in the earth, and I cannot think of else to do, so I still myself. I fall back into the empty and try to forget about the already half gone dream of rain and metamorphosis, but like all necessary things it comes back to tease me in mourning. I open my eyes so that I may tell the sky to her face that I no longer have any desire to remember, that I both confessed and witnessed and know now that the change will never come, but first I look one more time at the pond and find my own eyes staring back at me. I hate this more than I ever hated the woman’s invasive search and ugly desperation. I hate it so much that I actually feel something, I feel the hot press of my anger at the base of my throat, pushing on my useless vocal cords, creating meaning where there was none. I ride this wave, and grab onto the grass nearest me and rip, and with the uprising of the soil comes the downpour of the sky, the water coming down so hard and fast it knocks me off of my knees and onto my side. When I stand up to face the onslaught, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the water, and I am unrecognizable, the rain has shattered the image of myself beyond repair, and I know that this is how I will always remember myself, broken and afraid and enraged underneath the will of this world, and this knowledge tears me loose from myself. I am no longer human, wrapped in damp clothes and missing shoes, but an animal of an idea, rage pouring from my mouth, screaming loud enough to deafen my ears, a lion pours out of me, and I become it, roaring with the thunder and grasping at the lightning like it’s something I could touch if I tried hard enough. My fists break the earth and the earth breaks upon me, the blood from my knuckles enriches the soil and provides life while mine is ripped from me. Together the wind and I pick up the earth and replace it where it does not belong, branches in the pond and lilypads in the trees, the sky upon the earth and inside the water is me. The emotion coming from me feels surreal, feels wild, feels. I feel. I hurt. It’s not the rage coming out of me, anymore, it’s the hurt. So much hurt I could have created this downpour with my own tears and still had enough room left over to make a pond.

When the rain starts to abate, so do I, and when the presence of the moonlight returns to the clearing I can see what has happened. This part of our world has changed, windswept by the storm and me, the sky and I. We tore ourselves loose from how we wished to be perceived and destroyed what we thought was beautiful in the name of honesty. We broke the things we love just to find relief, and the world will remember, and its shape will change again to reflect it. When I turn back to the pond, I find it has overflowed quite a bit, and the surface is still moving from the storm, ripples and debris turning it over. My own actions have left me unrecognizable in the looking glass, and this beautiful thing may be ruined because of me, I sacrificed a piece of the earth so that I may see my true reflection, but it is this action of mine I detest the least, and the image of myself that I can learn to love.