hum

Hum was beside herself, the warm breeze from the water seemed to ripple her emotions, the caps of excitement, fear, arousal, and curiosity folding over and smoothing back on the surface of her only to rise and fall, as if she were all nerve endings, live current. The reeds of the marsh at the lakes edge bent to the will of the wind and as her gaze settled there for a moment, calm claimed her, if only temporarily. The bruised sky was still full of light although the rods would defeat the cones soon enough and shades of grey would announce the night. She still had plenty of time to hike back to the yurt, but couldn’t be bothered to move just yet.

She pulled her legs under her, stretched her spine toward the sky and let her gaze settle in the distance. The din of mental coffee shop chatter began to fade. The sensation of each blade of grass, bent under her weight, pushed against her; each mass settling into one another, equal but opposite forces. As if handling puppies, she let each thought softly wiggle, lapping at her, then gently put them down. Her edges ached and she had a moment of impatience, always at this point before passing through where her body seemed to disappear from her minds eye.

She was the fickle breeze, she was the generous reeds, she was the deep still water of the lake, she was the metal of the sky, she was clear and clean when she felt the electrons jump, all flipping to polarize, vibration subtle but true. ‘What was this? Let it go’ As if some obstacle dressed as desire, she wanted to reach out and grab it, but didn’t want to leave this place it was so hard to get to. She pulled the reigns on her mind taught. It felt like the deepest string plucked, the wooden box pushing it back out into the world through her. As if a butterfly landing in her open palms, fluttering, soft and about to take flight any second. She wanted to open her eyes, the base desires rising up in her; want, impatience, possession, longing. She could feel her hips, as if bone grinding on bone. No she commanded, not so much in her mind as her center. She let it go, stopped trying to wrap herself around it and that’s when a hot liquid spilled, beginning on her shoulders, as if atlas. It soaked her, gliding down her back, around her sides, through her spine, pooling in a place that she could never describe. It was like sex, like fire, like shouting, like drowning, like nothing she could name.

She blinked as she felt her face cupped by a soft warm hand. She was alone. The sky melting into the mountain peaks, the air pulled from the north and a shiver ran through her. She looked around her, sure that someone had been there; pulled her rudely from her meditation. But there was no where to hide for a mile in any direction and the call of the loon brought her fully back. She rolled her shoulders and pulled herself up to her full 5’10’’ frame, as if unpacked from a box come cross country over weeks. She began to hum a tune she’s never hum before, born of the lush green hills where her grandmother’s grandmother was born a yesterday too far to touch.