︎︎︎

There Was Only Time, So Count Everything

A lot of things are said while a lot of things are done. Was the room ever entered, or was the pane ever reflected? These reflections thrive in the clouds until they fall from the sky, breaking the framed window, falling through another one, until it is forgotten. The ceiling was scratched on the way down, leaving a reflection of itself on the floor below.

The stair pulls one foot up at a time, wrapping around, landing, and ascending. A window looks into the cavern hollowed out by the staircase, glazing light across one to another. Stop on the stairs, wait for this same light to signal to go. Two rooms on either side of the hallway have ceilings that slant down, mirroring the slant of the gleaming tin roof on the other side, bouncing the light back into the atmosphere, similar to the underside of the stairs, where the sound of the falling water cascades down. The head of each bed sits below this slant, pushing the mattress down into the floor, inhabiting a place for rest. May the birds and the rain outside make it through this light as well.

The sky changes by the second, as fast as the gravel leaves the soles of your shoes. They crumble and tumble, scattering years and years of movement, one person after another. The ground soaks up all that was once there, leaving no trace for our human eyes to notice. Turn the body 90º, and another palimpsest has been presented. If only there was paper big enough to grasp at it all. The walk from home has always been long. But before you know it, the world has already engulfed you.

The wind ripples, the grass sways, and 3 tones have been united. Dropped stones sink to a depth that memory can only perceive, hoping to fall into the burrow created by the tiny fiddler crab. Maybe they will become an artifacts for the crab, sinking deeper and deeper into the mud until they become one with the earth’s core again. We wonder where did all of these stones come from because no stone is a local here.

There was a small forest untouched by the neighboring structures. It was too thick to enter for years, but there was nowhere to go anyways; it was already boxed in. It was only a peripheral show of nature. There must have been many critters that called this place home. But just like us, where would they go. One day there was rumbling, the walls shook, and the air bounced. We are due for a massive earthquake, but this was not how I imagined it would occur. All day this continued; no directionality was captured. For all we knew it could have been from the sky. The next day this bounded forest was gone; 50 feet by 150 feet was no longer lush but only a fallen graveyard of sticks. Scars were cut into the earth, filled back up to make it whole again, just like that.

Today the light did not shine through the window but blew through the grass, allowing us to see the path taken by others if only we could jump over and see the world from their level.

The egrets bring omens of a good day. Sitting on the fence, they manifest a room that looks to the landscape beyond. Sometimes 1, sometimes a whole crowd. Move towards them, making sure to hold the wood from creaking, trying not to step on the scurrying fiddler crabs that reveal themselves between the cracks playing games with each other. Try to get as close as possible until one takes off and the others follow. Their direction must be meaningful. It must hold clues to this landscape. The fence becomes the floor, the floor becomes the ground, and the ground receives all that it wishes. A pattern is left for us to interpret, leading us one way, then another, and then another. The time between here and now can be read in each one of those stalks. The snails that climb also understand this form of time. The water coming and going, leaving and returning, departing and arriving, until the snails make it to the top, bending the grass over until it is recieved by the ground again, becoming the roots of itself. We are bounded by the fence, peering through the gaps, counting every single stalk until there are no more numbers.

The light again did not peer into the window but only fanned the mesh holding it back. The canopy above asked for the shade below, capturing this same light to produce rhythmic steps along the path which lead to tiny turtles. To count the turtles was a daily ritual. A snake has become our friend, a thin black one. We asked it to show itself as it sits in the ditch, watching us from afar through the grass. We continued and came back to find it gone. We began to question every root.

On the edge of the old neighborhood, a house must have created the bend in the road, careful to not disturb what was below. For so many years, this place seemed untouched. Retain the water, filter it, make it muck. There was chatter that an alligator was making a journey from one watering hole to another. It was said to be living in this hole. We spotted it in another. A baby basking in the sun, waiting for its mother to return.

The light has transformed into tiny pinpricks in the vast sheet of the sky. They send beams piercing through our atmosphere where we try to capture each and every one. Falling light snowflakes down as it reflects and glitters off the dust and mosquitos, hitting the ground with a cry of silence. The sky’s points and lines are arrayed overtop the field at the edge of the neighborhood. Islands of trees create such darkness that they are no longer rivaled by the stars. We wonder if sometimes the furthest things are right among us.