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(UNDER AWE-INSPIRING CANOPY THAT DEVOURS EVERY SUNBEAM AND LEAVES BEHIND NOTHING BUT A FAINT) \ neolithic chartreuse beam, time seems to hold its breath.
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I found an apple today. It was so washed out, a faint blur that almost disappeared into the forest floor’s shades of brown. But it no longer belonged to me: it belonged to the earth now. There’s something calming about watching something crumble to sustain another. Perhaps the forest is nature’s way of saying that nothing is ever truly lost. She knelt, fingers almost touching the swarm of ants but held back by a sudden respect for the small cycle before her.
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”Are they aware this is a culmination they’re consuming?” I breathed into the cinch among the old, lichenous trees. A non-native walking past caught her glance and replied stealthily, ”endings mean nothing to them, dear: their only concern is the continuance of the colony and the promise of another sunrise.”
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There’s a profound stillness in the way the timber listen, as the terrestrial aroma and sweet rot of apples fill the cinch, halting time between roots that stand out like the bushed veins of the world. The cinch grasps, ringing hidden wild bells in the thicket, while I stay rooted, thoughtful the apple’s slow perish into a swarm of moving silhouettes. Sheltered by the branches of an old, watchful tree that seems to bless this quiet, natural transition back into the soil.
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”But look” I whispered, my voice merely reaching the man next to me ”even in its ruins, it leftovers a magnum opus, as if an unapparent hand had thoroughly positioned every broken piece.”
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