come to rest

a crack in the timeline

‘Everything is change, he said, and everything is connected. Also everything returns, but what returns is not what went away…’

A feather – small, and unassuming, floats down from the canopy above me. I follow it as it falls, letting it hold my gaze. I try to remember how to breathe. Watch it sway with motion. In and out. Left, and right. There is nothing for me to do. Nowhere for me to be right now, and I am not in trouble. I emulate the girls behind endless ASMR channels, hours of their breathy whispers of affirmations ringing in my ear. ‘You are safe here. It’s time to rest.’ I let the words fill my mind, spreading out to any blank space. Covering the vitriol with calm. My job is simply to exist, and wait for this feather to fall. So graceful, unaware of its existence and place in the world. How important it is to me in this moment. Soft colliding with unforgiving concrete. Others tread over it, now, and it struggles to remain intact. Pushed and prodded further into the ground, each barb becoming thinly spread and weary. Twisted into another form, soon weathered pulp, unrecognisable from the grace it once held. Does it notice the loss? How grief permeates every part of my existence, I can’t help but mourn for it. What a cruel end. Barely allowed to exist without its host. Mother Nature takes no prisoners. I take another deep breath, slower this time. I imagine the leaves around me sighing in sync. A slight breeze pushes my hair around my face, and I battle to keep it from sticking to the Vaseline on my lips. The air remains crisp, but I feel something else. Something subtle. It catches onto me every now and then, staying for mere seconds. It stirs me. Moving from my seat, I stroll my way down the path ahead to try and reach water. I hold onto a bead of hope that grows within; it tells me my legs can make it. Two thin twigs, spindly, unpredictable, no sturdiness here. But still, they are there. Beneath me nonetheless. I put one in front of the other. There is nothing much promised, only pain. Today, all I can do is head slowly towards the river, hoping to embody its fret and let the layers of roughage wear away.

Beginning quote - Louise Gluck, from The Denial of Death in “Winter Recipes from The Collective: Poems”