In the Wind

We sit in the flat patch of dirt in the middle of the field of grass that has slowly become our refuge, or maybe it has caged us unknowingly. The wisps of green sway in the wind in harmony with her strands of hair, untamed just like the emotions brewing beneath her expressionless face. Our hands lay limp beside each other, a detail that sends a pang to my already tight chest. I remember when her fingers would cling to mine as if she wished to enter my very skin and engrave her name within my flesh. I clutch at the wet ground and hear the squelch of mud make its way under my fingernails and cake itself into the swirled pads of my fingertips. The earth has ironically acquainted itself with the intricate designs of my skin just as she has. The same earth that has left her with a look so worn and beaten that I cannot bring myself to embrace her and risk the contagion of her defeat. She opens her mouth and speaks a single phrase without looking at me, and I wish I could have seen how the syllables might have changed her fallen expression into one anew. But the wind has picked up, and her words are carried into the vast, unrelenting world, which has turned its back on us already.

But, suddenly, the stems of grass still, her unruly hair seems to freeze midair, and I feel as if the world has gone silent, though only long enough for me to blink once. My eyes open at the same time that the wind rushes towards us, changing direction from the previous northern blow. My eyes sting, and the air whistles in my ears. I instinctively hold up my mud-stained hands to feel the refreshing wind push through the hollow space between each finger. Then I hear it. A declaration that rids me of the unease that had settled into the crevices of my body unbeknownst to me. I hear the soft cadences of words tilted with apprehension delivered by the breeze, and they settle into the crevices of my ear.

"I want to be with you, not the world.”