“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me about my future.”
She stood in the fog, and she spoke to the fog. It fitted around her, a garment of silver kisses. It dampened her hair. She breathed and felt the mist inside: blank, deep. When she closed her eyes, she floated.
No.
Open.
Nearby, woven into a tree, a spiderweb captured trembling jewels from the air. She breathed again, anchoring her mind to the web and the water.
She took on the fog, and she was the fog. Fog with feet: roots planted solid in red mud, shifting sand, dark humid soil, the dusty petrichor of dirt roads when they are liminal, when it just-rains.
Breathe.
The energy danced higher, and she was music. She was highway hum and galaxy hush. She was ache and longing, a way felt in the dark.
Breathe.
Higher – and she was golden, warm and real. Higher and she was lonely sun.
And higher – green forest light, open fields, the topography of home.
Another breath and she was sky, soaring tip-of-tongue, newly formed. Up here she was a moan, a murmur, a cry.
And higher still: she knew, and she *knew*, until wings whispered across a memory – hard to reach – and she came soclose to almost-remembered, almost-arrived.
From this spot, she cast her senses ahead, over and over, but the distance was obscured.
This is always
where she fell
and fell
and fell
until the moment was a blank page
and she was nothing,
again,
but the fog
and her feet on the ground
until she was light and shadow,
again,
playing in the forest
until she settled
and found the place
that felt like home:
“tell me,” she said,
inside the mute fog
and it was green
was the green
was the green
that answered:
“rest.
it’s okay.
you’re supposed to be
Here.”
and she closed her eyes
and she sighed.
Words and photo © Jaime Greenberg, 2022
