Quiet Quiet

How much do you know about that? "About what?” I said. There's a long distance between here and there and you'll never make it. "Any ideas?" "None", I said.
"Idiot", was all I got. "You idiot!" Look at your hands they look like tree limbs, so gnarled and twisted. You are wooden and truncated and you're scarring people.
Quiet quiet.
I started thinking and remembered an autumn field in Saskatchewan where I'd taken a hayride in the moonlight on a flatbed truck with thirty other students and as many bales of hay. The truck circled a small patch of field in aimless careful circles, round and round. The experience stunted, far from the vision of wave upon wave of wheat leaning in the moonlight. We were all freezing, a chafing kind of cold, circling the frozen field and I'm losing my patience, no thrills here.
And I'm poking the farmer in the back 'hey', and he looks over his shoulder, instantly I'm remembering the tepid chocolate and the Styrofoam cup and how cold we all are laughing like angels. Then the quiet, that perfect sweet prairie quiet, frozen ground as I stood on it aware I left no footprint, no footprint in all of that dark and clear silence, and feeling I had no substance either.
And since then I'd been sleeping, the adrenaline numbing the feeling in my fingertips. Every footstep sticking in the West Coast mud, every footfall making its point. And then the bark started growing, just along the arm, 'give a care, came a chiding voice. "Huh", can't feel much I said. I'm low, so low." And everything is stained, my clothes and furniture and paint on the wall, the cheeks on my face all stained. What a bore, no thrills here.
The good news is my arms are in leaf. I was marveling at the new growth - I usually kill plants. Never mind that the attributes of a tree are not normal to a person, not normal at all.
I just wanted to be dressed in a white turtleneck and soft white pants to show off my green leaves and scratchy bark. I'm tough I thought real tough, what's a little bark if I can grow these shiny green leaves.
I felt innocent and real and I knew people could see me, in a new way, more special favours or maybe not, just seeing me was enough. Radiant with my new growth like the cold pure air of the prairie.
And I was hoping for a chance at peace, the uncomplicated kind - swirls and swirls of pink frosting on high cupcakes and the smiles are innocent and gaping and it’s all play. We all look stupid and we're real and free, awkward as hell, that's my fantasy. We are all freaky and weird and out of the box.
Rhonda S

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