Apricot Sprites

the wind, of course, blows,

the green grass sways,

the white clouds float on by.

you know this, and you watch anyway.

somewhere else, there’s a distant memory 

bubbling up from deep inside you, 

whispering and humming and—

you look up from where you’re sitting in the crook of the arms of 

the tree, massive, unyielding, 

and your eyes follow its forked branches from trunk to tip, 

over and over again.

you find yourself lost in them,

a million nerve endings swaying in the breeze.

crackling and humming under the sky; pulsing, writhing,

enshrouded in a soft, gentle glow.

the sense grows stronger.

you have been here a very long time, but you forget.

you feel the wind, the grass.

you watch the clouds.

the feeling persists. 

the hum crawls inside your ears and buries itself in your brain.

it travels down your spine and spreads, ebbing further into

your body with every beat of your tiny heart.

you grow restless. your bones are far too big for your skin.

the blood pumping through your body is too hot, 

burning inside your limbs, flowing molten lava through your veins.

the hum grows louder. 

it overpowers every other sense, every other thought or idea or feeling.

you moan and twist and growl in frustration,

and then

you hack into the side of tree, 

over and over,

until you hear a crack and a groan and an awful creak,

and everything is quiet.

the hum has ceased. the wind is still. 

a new thought presents itself— just for a moment,

knocking politely from behind your eyes, 

and you think for a second about the fact that the core of a tree and the nose of an elephant share a name. is that something? is that anything? is any of this anything?

the silence persists. 

you peer, heaving and sweating, into the eye of the stump.

your eyes follow the maze of the rings, and you see that

right in the center the shape of a small figure is embedded in the soft wood.

a tiny head, spindly long arms and trailing torso, 

trapped in the maze of the rings.

you stand there, staring at the ghost in the grain of the wood for so long that the grass begins to grow around your feet, and the roots begin to curl quietly around your toes. 

and a little grasshopper lands itself on your arm, nibbling gently on the top of your skin. 

and the big blue sky darkens and then is blue again, 

over and over, 

and the mutilated stump, unchanged by the relay of the days,

watches as you become dirt. 

and the breeze begins to snake itself around the dead branches. and a sprinkling of budding flowers open their mouths hungrily towards the sky, gulping down the new air. and a chorus of insects bursts into laughter, and the sun watches on, and the moon watches on,

and the birds begin to sing.