Some days, when I am feeling more invisible than others, I look at that tree outside and watch the snail that crawls as slowly as I do. Alone, I slow my reflexes to nothing and feel invisible, like an ant or a tree beetle, disappearing into the nothingness of bark and the inner life. I am invisible, I am not heard, even when I am screaming. I am just a snail, moving slowly along the curling bark, trudging above or behind the ants and other crawling things. Sometimes a bear climbs up and rests in the branches above me, or a raven settles on the branch below with fat in its beak. Then I just settle in, deep in the furrows of curling bark, without a voice, without light — under the bark, just waiting, and waiting.
When this spiral unfolds into the daylight again, I wonder where my life went in this darkness. The spiral I exist in, going in and coming out eternally, from darkness to light and from light back to darkness — as spirals of stars that come and go, as sounds of the birds that ebb and flow, as creatures that grow and live and die, over and over, in these deep dark layers of wood and bark where I travel so slowly, unheard, unseen.
EB Converse writes: flash fiction, novels, and art journalism. She is also a painter.
No comments:
Post a Comment