Girl

There once lived a girl, in a forest. She lived far far away from anyone else. The birds sang her awake each morning and the wolves howled her to sleep each night. Her heart was often heavy in her chest, when this feeling came she would run to her favourite tree and climb as high as she could. This is like being a bird she would think. When she was high up in her favourite tree she might even think of letting herself fall. Who would know? The singing birds and howling wolves would not care long that she was gone. That’s why she loved the singing birds and howling wolves so much, they would sing and howl whether she could hear them or not… and the trees would stand silent witness to a world with or without howling wolves and singing birds, this she knew. In her fine finger bones and her heavy searching skull.

From her favourite tree she could see a very long way, even on misty days the tree seemed to lift her above the gentle obscurity. Out to the edge of the forest, where a great brown river curved through sight and beyond, a noble mountain rose. The forest, the river, the mountain; these were her family.

On a day with sun streaming yellow through her burn colour hair she fell to her knees in leaf litter. She cried for the streaming sun and she cried for the low slung cloud and she cried for what she could not feel. Her hands tore through the earth beneath the littered leaf and her legs were wet cold with salt puddle tears. Why she wondered. How she wondered, when she wondered. Would one day the sun stream upon her with another? Streaming sun would warm the two. Streaming sun would warm her not so much as the skin to skin of two. Another.

On one day she cried, she cried with joy. She grasped the hair of the howling wolf and loved the song of every bird. She danced as her tears fell and knew solitary was beauty- was the only, was the ever. Lilac sky pressed her. Whistling winds caressed her. She cried in happy sleep to come.

On days countless, she made in her mind a great rusting road besided by every wish she had ever wished and every dream she had ever seen, these verges of hers watched her run walk fall. Run walk fall. The lonely tittered inside her in some bright dusk field, the solo of violent rage burned between the rust road and her breaking heel. Too often came the rough of bark in place of the space of some one. Too often to surprise. Too often.

With the wolves she howled.

With the birds she sang.

On one day she climbed her favourite tree and looked to the noble river. She looked up to the mountain and down onto the forest. She filled with the blue of the sky. The clear iced air wreathed her veins in calm, expert as nature she balanced there- and slept…

When she awoke the world was changed- how?- somehow, and she took once more the iced air into her deep redded lungs and looked forth into the above.

A beginning...