Nature Girl has been beaten
into shape, beaten out of me.
I've been left alone on a foreign
shore, a foreigner abandoned
in a world I don't belong to,
inside a world outside
the outside.
I
can't
breathe
in here but
that doesn't matter
to anyone, not even me.
I'm a space cadet without a helmet.
There's no path back to where
(or who) I was. I am bereft
of context, an orphaned
asterisk.
Eleven
years later
and I still don't
have one right answer.
I'm no longer in the wrong
class but now I wander the halls
in a stupor. I no longer try the
doors, I just look out the
windows, unconcerned
as to their reality as I
can no longer count
their dimensions.
A pixel, a picture, an unreachable
reality, what's the difference
to an old woman trapped
in the perpetual motion
of poverty?
I know the score, I've done the math.
Sometimes when I drown,
the water is cold.
Sometimes when I drown,
the water is warm.
Sometimes that's the only
choice I have.
When it rains on my virtual island
I stay inside. I pretend to shelter.
She did too, back in the long
ago day, crawling in between
the skinny legs of sumac.
She thought she knew things
and I learned to disbelieve
and now I get it:
She knew the important things.
But none of it was enough to
fill up a world that's been
emptied out. She'd
never heard
of
the
strangler fig
and wouldn't have
been wise enough to be afraid.
I'm afraid, but not for her.
She's gone.
I killed her.
And I've lost far more than I've
gained from it, all said.
I thought I had no choice, and
maybe I was right. Poor thing.
She sat in that dorm room alone
and cried. Heartbroken.
I have to do this, I said and wrote
(I may still have it somewhere).
I can no longer follow the changing
of the seasons, each sign given
freely, like a gift.
I can no longer watch for the
Wild Hunt or listen to the
chorus of a billion
insects or delight
in the antics
of
snapping turtles
and wolf spiders and
tree beetles and water scorpions
or search for the bubble eggs of
frogs and toads and newts or
peel the bark from wild
grape or run my
fingers
over
the silky
smooth wood
of fallen pine branches
or listen for the trickle of snowmelt.
(She was always alone but
never lonely.)
It's all gone now, I said, I wrote.
I have to give it up. I have to
join this world that closes
off the world that isn't
beholden to time.
And I did.
And I wish I could go back.
None of it was worthwhile.
Over thirty years later and not one
moment was worthwhile.
There's no key here.
There's no breadcrumbs.
It's just a complicated mess,
all backwards. And yet,
I'm not bitter.
Only sad.
I remember her.
I remember who I was.
I remember who I sacrificed.
I never want to forget.
August 1, 2026
