Across the valley a young boy was lying on his back in a small clearing in the forest behind his house. It was so quiet he could hear his own heart beating. It was all that let him know he was alive. What would it be like to not be alive, he wondered? To be dead?
He felt like the center pin of a pinwheel, as if the spike in his middle kept his whole family spinning. Middle child, caught between his mother's secret love of stories and his father's hatred of "tales and fancy." He can't serve both to save his own soul, and he was so tired.
He didn't like to think about death, and yet sometimes it simply jumped into his mind and teased his thoughts in that direction. To be gone from this place—forever? Perhaps the next place would be a better one—perhaps Samika is there waiting for him, even calling him.
Marcus rolled over on his stomach and put his ear to the earth. Sometimes, if he quieted his thoughts, even his own breathing, he could feel a rhythmic thumping beneath the surface of the earth. It made him feel small, but a good kind of small, as if he was just a part of all things and not separate and alone.
Yes, if he were dead, they would put him in the earth and he would be home at last.
A quiet reflection
Where do you listen when the world feels too heavy to carry alone?
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