Us

We have a code now. Our language. Something that only we know what it means. Our secret. It hangs there as an invisible helium balloon, as neuropathway in our forest, hers of childhood and mine of motherhood, back to this time as I scramble to frame in the darkness, from under the cocoon of a soft duvet, what came before us and what remains in these passageways now that the smears of fear put there by the shadow of a loss, of what could have been, sadness at what has passed, on our our bridge where the billy goats gruff or trolls scrambling, and clip clapping of hooves, recoiled in on themselves, knock on the gaps between what was and what was meant to be, in arches, and wooden planks with gaps that open and close, shrink and expand like pupils running through tunnels of a cave, and hands that feel the knots of twine ropes hands, burning and gripping to what feels safe, to love the journey and knowing it is a choice, as it is a chore, natural as smooth stepping stones that form a game, we use to traverse the streams, looking without a gaze, carefully, at how wondrous it all is when we take care to feel the blueness of the sky on our skin, or the rain mist fog in the gloom, and know that what we feel now is better understood by looking backwards, in a recall always beyond our reach, and the stories that we carve, and immerse ourselves in is a charade of our own doing, I stroke her hair in the night to comfort her, as we move over the ravine that slices the mountain in two halves, watching the pebbles slip into an abyss with eerie silence, without the echo of recovery that is the pause in our search, as if the night were the…