Hey everyone! Recently life has been super busy with me finishing up assignments for the semester and living the present to the fullest. For one of my classes this semester I finally got to revisit fiction writing (oh how I have missed it so much), and I’m actually quite happy with the result. I experimented with the way I organized this piece, branching into different mediums beyond writing itself. I hope you enjoy :)

Here is the transcript too:

Finding

“A thousand steps have breached my back, but no one’s path before has left a trail so disharmonious with the tracks she leaves behind.”

I drew in a breath, deep as the Mariana trench, searching for the stars that paint the seas. The world before me is the place I have always desired, but could never manifest in my mind. The picture was obscured, unable to paint an image of what I have never before experienced. I am limited in that way: my mind only knows what it has seen before. Finally, I have found the place. My place.

My lips branched towards the sky and my feet rooted within the sand. A light rushed out of my body, unstoppable as the ocean’s tides. I became one with the land, foraging my way through the life that was presented to me. I ran to where the tide grazes land. The sea’s cold touch froze my toes, my skin was being sliced open. The slice was hardly violent, but instead promised the same joy as opening a wrapped gift.

I found this land after a lifelong search of anything perpendicular to the parallel buildings  and predefined sidewalks. I found the skyscrapers phallic, raping the skies only birds were supposed to grace. The people inside were no better, living on their Mount Olympus while the majority of us were Atlas, unknowingly holding up the facade. 

But at the oceanside, I saw that facade dissolve with the salt into the water. I walked towards the horizon. The water moving up my body unwrapping me from the smog that once confined me to the city, revealing the horizontal infinitely those skyscrapers have always blocked.  

I began to settle myself to this dream land, adapting the environment to build my shelter. I roamed the bordering woods for materials: sticks, stones, leaves. Leaves crunched beneath my toes in a metronomic rhythm, creating the bass line to my new melody. I allowed the breeze to carry me whichever way it flowed, ending up at a loose branch wedged at the bark ridge of another tree. It was a stunning piece of wood: smooth, a rich burnt sienna color—perfect for my shelter. I tried to free the branch, but found no luck. With every tug, my eyebrows furrowed. With one forceful last pull, the branch unlatched from the nook, see-sawed behind me and slammed into the branches of a neighboring tree, shaking them chaotically. 

I turned my face towards the bustling and down came a large bundle of twigs, leaves, and grass, meticulously formed. The bundle thudded to the ground and all thought put into intertwining the natural world, was scattered. What was left at the center were flattened yolks with beaks, sealed eyes, and scrawny black hairs. 

Before I could even process what I had done, a deafening screech reverberated through the skies as a swarm of crows dove towards the newly laid carcasses. Adrenaline stormed my veins, and I did what I could only think to do: escape. 

Unveiling

“Fog floods the skies. Waves thunder the shores. The wind joins the howls of nearing coyotes on a hunt. The girl, still bright and unaware, has sharp outlines separating her from the landscape surrounding.” 

How can I ever forgive myself for the guilt that breeds inside, a spontaneous generation that seizes to be explained, but persists as a buzz in my ears? My mother warned me against my drifting mind—how my soul would extend beyond the confounds of my skin and erode the barrier that calls me human. I wanted to forget my nature, choose nurture, and be reunited with Nature herself. Alas, I am no different than my counterparts. My lungs can never sing the sea’s song. I am but a mimic to mimicry where the most essential elements are lost in translation. 

I thought I could separate myself from the destruction my kind has created, but every time I create a shelter of twigs and rocks, the linear structure will always juxtapose the freeform curves of the world around me. My shelter will always destroy the shelter of another’s. I followed my heart to the sea, but looking back, the five-toe imprints reminded me that I am not created for this world. I know the truth, but it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that my existence, my livelihood, comes at the perpetual extinction of another’s. 

I wanted so badly to be the sea that hugs everything within its grasp, yet suffocates nothing. The fish who are forever touched by Her love, but utter no distaste. However, my touch is a gravity that will always pull everything down. I crush what I step. My oily skin will never mix with the water. Yet I still swim. I smash my arms through the surface tension. My feet kick away from the city, away from the shores. I cannot be a part of this world, but I can never return to my own. The horizon is all I have. The blur in the distance I wish holds something greater. 

”Every once in a while, I still recall the girl’s walk long after my tides have washed away her tracks. Although she may have left my shores alive, she has left her life behind. After she swam away, yet again looking for escape, one of my waves tore through her body, crushing her against a boulder. My smaller tides eventually pulled her ashore, leaving her corpse to decompose. Maggots and flies and fungus ate away her skin until she was joined with the soil. Her wish has come true. She has become a part the world she dreamed of where a red flower blossoms in her place.”