Prove

At some point it becomes too late to turn back, and you're signing the papers and moving ahead. It's not often you get the chance to prove yourself to yourself, and yet here you are, careening down the country roads in determination to accomplish something novel. 

Late last night, after the pub was closing and the proprietor gave you the day's artisan loaves for free, you found a hidden backroad back to your village where no one was driving. You floated home on your bicycle in the twilight, tipsy from the ales but heady mostly from the magic of summer evenings. 

How could I ever stop living life this way? How could I ever settle down and conform? 

The questions that seem so profound in winter
flutter away in the summer breeze. 

A moment of invincibility. 

Fair enough.  

Steel

Nerves of spaghetti, you tell her and feel it resonate into your leg muscles. Certain you've done difficult things before, you clench your teeth and vow to make it through this, too. It's not like you're going to war. Except, perhaps, against your own senses. 

It takes all day to construct a sentence. Takes all day to remember even your most shallow breaths. The noodles take up too much of your time, you've lost a whole life to the synapses sparking wildfires in your head. It's too sunny, too warm, to regret it now, but you know the sadness will catch up with you come fall. 

A whole life lost 
and to what? 

You promise yourself silently 

to at least appreciate when you get it

right.  

Wave

It's a perfect summer evening. The wind is gone, the sky clear blue again. Little clouds drift like lambs across the zenith, bathed in the warm glow of sunset. One day of sunshine and you forget all your worries, forget that you were ready to pack it in for winter and hope for another year. 

Humans are simple that way, you think. When all seems lost the storm abates, the fever breaks. You book a car. Convince yourself you'll figure out how to drive it when the time comes. 

There are fairies in the hedgerows, you just know it.  

You wonder how many years more you'll keep looking for another version of yourself in unknown fields.  

Wouldn't it just be easier to give in and accept the one you have? 

Wind

The gale sets in, blows clear through your head until you're not sure which way is up. You linger over coffee in the doorway while the panes bump against the 17th century stonework, think are we meant to do all this on our own? before the dogs bump you on their way out to bob for apples in the orchard. The forecast says easy-breezy days are over, you have time to panic before realizing that you're only a third of the way through your adventure, that August stretches ahead of you with promise of warm oceans and late nights, still. 

You think perhaps solitude draws the terrors out of you, takes them to the surface and gives them oxygen, but the truth is they're always there, isn't it? It's just in company there's no time to dissect them, to turn them over in your hand and try to get to the next step. Company is only a way to stave off the Darkness. 

But what does one do
with that? 

Admiral

It takes a few days before you realize what it is, that familiar feeling of something sweet but ethereal in the air. It's not the bleating of the sheep, or the tangle in the hedgerows. It's the butterflies. Red admirals lining the warm roads, tortoiseshells in the flowers and little white ones following us around in the afernoons. I spent a whole childhood with butterflies and now where have they gone?

A little voice whispers that it's not they who have gone, but I. That's the truth, of course, but I don't know what to make of it. It's Friday, the world has caught up to me, and I don't know what to make of anything. A kind delivery driver arrives with wine and strawberries and coffee, I've forgotten to add milk to the list but no matter. Tomorrow I will bike to the next village over, see what they may have to offer. 

I'm getting the insights for free.  

Bramble

The little bits of magic start to appear in the corner of your eye. The hedgerows tingle with hidden fairies, the blackberries along the country road taste sweeter than anything that's come across your tongue, laced with a sugar until now unknown. There are swans in the dykes, distant church bells across the valley. You feel it coming, you knew it would come, you were just always so slow about settling in. Your accent lilts, twists itself to fit the person at the other end of a conversation, you hear it stumble, momentary scratches on a chalkboard. The dogs ask you to finish work early and go for excursions around the property. You pour a glass of wine and follow them in the high, dry grass. Wonder if this is what a life could be like. 

After all, for a moment, yours is. 

 

Nerves

Every adventure is a challenge to your apprehensions. New sounds, new sensations, you train yourself to breathe across the hurdles and prepare yourself for bigger steps for days. Your accent stumbles and giggles across itself, you lie in a hammock in the early evening and remember how to read again. Is time slipping from your fingers again? Or are you playing your cards right, clearing the path for a cake walk through the rolling fields ahead?

Life is too short, always too short. Your days are so full and yet how hard to remember how it is to appreciate the world when you have it. 

All you can do is try. 

The hurdles will wait until you can climb them.  

Somerset

Weeks disappear in a rush, you do not write. Your journal is scribbled mayhem, trying to recall the exact color of the ocean on the west coast and the way the jellyfish stingers nettle your skin for just a brief moment before all you taste is salt. How your eyebrows turn white. How your heart rests differently in your chest when it is held up by those who've known you forever. How simple gratitude feels when everything is just the way you'd hoped. 

I arrived in England later than planned, only the slightest hint of dusk remaining as we careened through the sleeping villages. By the time I woke, rolling fields spread out around me, an old stone cottage sat on my shoulders, a foreign accent lilted around my tongue and I was unable to stop it. The dogs run ahead on our morning walks but they always find their way back. I wonder what it would be like to live here.

Weeks disappear, I do not write. 

Perhaps I don't always have to. The smell of an English rose can still linger, 
even when it's only in your mind.  

Arrive

Step off the commuter train and strain your eyes along the platform. At the very end, spot a small creature, mop of white hair, waving a balloon and a chocolate bar. He sees you in return, comes barreling towards you, arms outstretched, chocolate bar flailing. For children, reunions are simple, tangible, the hug comes easy. It's no more, no less than this moment. 

You sink back into your homeland, find your footing, hear your accent return, sleep like you never had trouble breathing. It feels complicated when you think about it. 

But maybe it's no more, no less, than moments stacked on each other. Maybe you're making mountains out of what could've just been 
a hug.