Mesmerized

I can see my eyes twitch from side to side. They jumble around my head and slip out through my ears, rolling along and picking up grains of dirt. She’s here in these woods tonight. I can feel her here with me by the soft breath of the grass. Sunshine laden and simmering in the forsaken day. Her campfire scented skin burns around me, singing the hair along my arms. My eyelids have gone red and feel as though they are blazing with fire, seeking nothing but the relief of shade. A chance to cover my eyes with my arms and obtain sweet salvation of encompassing darkness.

She roars with an intensity she cannot comprehend. It consumes her without any warning or hint of the danger she harbors. Yet her gentle caress of the clouds in the sky pushes them into a new light. She lifts the overbearing burden from me easily as she swirled gray mist through the sky. Spinning the clouds into small waves circling into one another, forming to the image of a whirlpool. Finally I found peace as my pain slowly seeped from red to gray, bright hot coals melting, the burning ebbs away as the embers are extinguished. The rocks dissolved into a gray paste that was as cool as mud.

I can open my eyes once more and the skin of my waterline sticks to the top for a few moments. Dry, cracked, busted. Pain understands it has overstayed its welcome, fluttering bat wings disappear in the sudden fog in the forest. She is here with me and I am saved. She is here with me and I am allowed to exist. The sun has been covered with light gray rain clouds that are drizzling life onto the barren soil.

My skin readjusts to my bones, remembering where it fits along on the jagged curves and indented crevices. I molt once more, new skin replacing where I had been burdened. Rising again with ancient and beginning scars to form what time has created.The ground sinks into my skin mud was always meant to come back to the start. I mend myself as many times as it takes. I fix every last crack in my skin. I emerge from this day with her by my side.