SANCTUARY OF CALM

🕊️🕊️☺️

Slow steady steps, changing the position to place the foot so regularly, like pawns on your chessboard. My footfalls slowly crunching on the carpet of dry rotten leaves overwhelming my body with a strange compulsion. Pieces of dry sticks snapping under my now added weight (one year back this wouldn’t have happened) the sounds scaring away little chirping birds as their fluttering wings created an agonizing pattern surrounding the solitude of the green fortress. I walked carefully trying to block the whispers from the wind and avoiding to stumble on tree stumps. At times I wondered of the beautiful green that would have existed if the trees were let to grow. 

The more I walked, the more I lost the sense of the fragrance of every tree I knew by scent. The air filled with the reek of decay and the castings of worms. The towering woods made it hard to locate the luminous petal of silver that always freckled the sky every morning. Every morning I looked at it giving me memories of a young me sitting in that science class, with the teacher forcing the solar system down our throats💔. The more I walked the more it reeked of age, just lucky that July was far behind or I would be trying to find way through vaporous mist that always wrapped around trees in the cold month.

Moving forward the environ was more calm, the grass green and soft. A wave of peace overtaking my consciousness. The music that had played so loud in my heart fading, the breeze quiet and standstill. No echoes, nothing stirred, the damp breath far behind and the mocking jays that were always so noisy seemed to be hiding far away feasting on a feathery prey. This is the calmness I had yearned for the last couple of days. to sit in silence taking of time from life and its chaos to connect with the world around. To caress soft petals of blooming jungle roses getting tingles in my fingers but well aware of the harm lying under its beauty.

 Slowly I put my back against a boulder that lay under an ancient mahogany tree covered with moss with its twigs crackling every now and then. I placed my head on the mossy pillow and I closed my eyes as I drifted to infinity. At that moment I forgot about all the confusion, the hurt, the chaos and all the powerful proportions. I forgot about the thousands of battles I fought all day long. My consciousness swayed in the whirlwind, that on other nights had been charred with rain and night but today it was bright and soothing. I dreamt of the branches that could have grown out of the long fallen trees. I thought of the horns of old ships that were tired of staying afloat in old forgotten ports. 

I wished I could touch my heart, and if only my fingers could caress it and listen to find out whether it sounded like the sirens of a broken ship or like the dusking of a lone beach but maybe, just maybe the sound of a heartening instrument, full of waves with the face of another promising night. Or maybe beating with hope, wanting out of void shipwrecks, uncertainties. Longing for happiness and searching it through the winds that blow across motionless currents. To forget the dreams that once poured from my heart in torrents, dreams covered in dust, galloping like black riders, dreams full of misfortunes. 

I knew I was going to face the wind, in the night in the turbulent of my emotions, without worry but with happiness. For long I had searched but now space had been overcome by time and I no longer feared to walk along the shores ready to bear the purity or the destruction against all pain. Ready to sing every song there was. And I gain I remembered that midday was here, in that warmth of life and my sight searched no more and I ceased to worry. I slowly stood up and for one last time glanced at the green grass and started walking back home.