I’ve walked through this forest many times before.

Dressed in a form-fitting, light baby blue, long flowing dress, down to my ankles.

It’s long sleeve, but off both the shoulders.

Long red hair, messy and unkept, stretched down the middle of my back.

The rain pours down as I roam this mossy family of wood and green.

My dress soaked, nipples protruding through so delicate.

I hold the bottom of my flowy dress up with both hands as I’m running in slow motion,

Hair slapping the back of my shoulder blades.

Water trickles slowly down my cupid’s bow and drips down slowly on my bottom lip.

I stop urgently right in a circle of trees, above their flourishing green branches

As I hear them call me to attention.

I’m alone here again as I have been many times before.

I kneel in shame, dress covering my feet and body now.

I sense their disappointment in my loneliness and newfound pain,

As they were never expecting me back before their graces in this position again.

A rush of wind tornadoes through this forest in an instant.

They bow to the power of it and in this instant, all of their branches turn brown and fall away,

Their beauty stripped from their bones.

And this forest goes dark, done with the likes of me.

I am at once overcome with fear and heartbreak.

They have spoken their answers to me and left me there in my ruins.

A great lesson from my ancestry has rushed over me as even the night cicadas quiet.

As if a great respect falls across this entire forest in the finality of this demand passed from them

to me.

I slowly push off of the ground, head hung in complete defeat knowing the path I have laid before

myself.

I have put myself here in this position and won’t look away from what needs to be done.

A love.

A new feeling.

A path newly taken.

All fleeting and seemingly slipping right out of my fingers.

I keep my composure because I am not unfamiliar with losing things, or being without.

I am but a dark bird, a cast out angel with broken wings on a short journey through this world,

through this forest.

The news of my fellow tree’s advice has stricken me to tears as I walk slower than I ever have

Through this forest.

I walk slow to avoid facing what is on the other side of it. Facing the truth.

I can’t fathom where things seem to go wrong, but they do.

And the forest calls me here when it is time for the awakening that I need.

I have learned enough in this forest through the times that when I reach the edge of it,

I will do so with my head up, peeking forward.

I am but an entity full of many human mistakes.

An ora of nothing at times, quietly observing, hoping to be discovered so I can merely scream,

“Yes! It’s me! You have found me, and I am here, in full surrender!”

But for now, I walk slowly to the edge of this forest, feeting sinking into the most green moss

I have ever seen.

Wetness drying in an instant, and the horrible sun has hit my skin and taken my shield away.

Return I go to the shade along the treeline to protect the burning,

But it offers me no solice to the burning inside…….

I rip the bottom off of this dress weighting me down, along with the sleeves once

Draping off of these boney shoulders.

I walk now with a purpose. An answer. A goal. A path. A story continued..

I feel the wind at my back, pushing me forward.

And I go always where it blows me.