Member-only story
The Day the Woods Spoke
A Search for the Missing and What the Forest Gave Back
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The ground was wet with morning dew, a cold slick blessing soaking through and the soles of boots that never learn
how heavy hope can make you burn.
My head still throbbed from herbs I’d brewed,
last night’s green ghosts, I was in a dark mood.
All in preparation, brave and raw, for a forestry tour with a prayer as law:
hear the pines, read the silence, follow the thread
to the place where a missing boy might be led.
He ran, I don’t know what for, ran out on life, ran out the door,
and years went by like crows in flight, black punctuation in the night.
His mom and dad kept calling, pleading, two hearts stuck in the same repeating: Bring him home. Bring him home.
Even grief needs somewhere to lay its bones.
That morning felt… wrong in the air like the trees were holding their breath in prayer. My eyes were dazed, my thoughts half-thin,
as if the woods could see my every sin:
coming to look, coming to know,
coming to meet what we all fear to show.
