Fenomena

I stay up too late, and lie lingering in the log bed until long after the first sun rays reach the thousand-piece puzzle outside the door. The birds on the roof sound more like bear cubs by the day, tumbling around and discovering their limbs in ways that are cuter at a distance. So many things are cuter at a distance, you think, but it's a thought that passes by without much engagement. 

In the country, unwanted thougths have a way of drifting off with the breeze across the meadows. 

A new story begins telling itself to you, quietly at first, like it's afraid your shop's no longer open for visitors, like it's afraid your ship has already sailed to more reasonable shores. You want to tell it you are not dangerous, but yelling from a distance rarely gives that impression, so you sit still, instead, and wait for it to approach. The woods are full of stories, you remember now, the woods are where rocks come alive and dangers lurk in soft moss, you grew up in these woods and that's why your people became storytellers to begin with.

We had to make sense of the shadows that follow us, the sounds from the attic, for a thousand years we have had to make our own light in the dark because the winters are long and unforgiving. I'm not saying it happens without struggle. 

I'm just saying if you sit still and watch it, the forest will let you know what you don't.