She didn’t know it then

she knew now.

Woken up with on a  loop blasting around her mind in surreal sound-

 the Russian bass choir chanting in all surround.

An apt app unconsciousness knew her well.

A year ago, life had been different.

Mirthful, optimistic playful

 Now,  rooted to the spot with foliage, branches, lush leaves taking in the vagabonds seeking shelter.

Lost souls in need hidden by darkness

these nomadic souls plotting their next move.

Time for souls to gather there their thoughts

 the continued search of their dreams and pursuits.

Forlorn found herself lost in her own shades of solitude.

She was alone. Tucked up in her double bed -a pattern of flowers – all Huey reds and purples.

 Forlorn – wrapped up in a ditzy forlorn pattern matched her current mental state.

She could feel the bubbling creeping up to death by poison ivy- curling it’s away from the roots of her feet upwards.

It would not stop until she was mummified into silence.

She knew it wanted to make sure her mouth, eyes & nose covered  in bondage to the soil solidly planted her roots.

One day she had an epiphany.

 Moments of clarity were few.

 A  possibility to be something purposeful meaningful for her.

She had given life sustained it for those souls.

Yet she was weary, ageing.

Before she was forced to put down roots in an abode that spoke in foreign serpentine tongues;

Forlorn had forgotten she used to be a road runner girl.

A girl was taken by flights of fancy on a whim.

Ready to outrun her nemesis wanting to keep her hostage in a place she knew she didn’t belong.

An elder had kept her close to her.

Fearful to let her be free

To be whatever She wanted to be.

 She begged her ancestors to rouse the beasts of deforestation to seize her keeper.

 she could get a clean break – start over.

Feel movement not in height but in fluidity.

Nostalgic fragments of past it feelings -fragments

a pair of wings

A pair of  arms

Even a pair of legs again.

 Seasons passed still, she lay rooted to this spot. Full and plumaged as ever.

Ready to entice wanderers to seek shelter for without telling her a reason.

 

 She fidgeted, yawned, stretched willing pine bristles to deter these unwanted vagrants.

 Her heart had almost given up. She had succumbed to what she supposed was her last winter.

One eve she looked at the bees collecting sweet nectar for the unseen Gods.

Forlorn conceived a sapling of hope

Mental Rummaging a sense of Deja Vu.

I know it’s here’- impatient, sighing.

 

A piece of technology from the world she was once a part of.

A means of magic.

A way to communicate her distress.

Tangled hands finally caught the pointed end of a carved, wooden wand.

Slim, compact light.

Her true form to be again.

Stretching open her eyeballs could be made simpler if she had the eyelashes to wipe away the moss interfering with her vision to flee..

Diminished another sense

She would forget who she was

 what she wanted to be

 She drifted into a frightful sleep.

A woodpecker hammered a hole of her  bleak existence.

The epiphany.

The start of her new life was in a gestation period of fewer than 12 hours!

How did I sleep for so long? Christ! berating her herself under the twilight

Suddenly a swarm, around her were a fleet of fireflies.

 One eyeball strained

and out into focus confirmed  her impending anxiousness starting to emit it’s familiar disparate gas into her trunk form.

The final place she held on to her liberty – her mind.

Thoughts ploughed at her – like a farmer attacking a poorly harvested crop.

Not fit for tendering

Nor the soft touch of her keeper.

 

Soiled ground.

Soiled soul.

Soiled mind.

She fought with all might

Absorbed more -light, water, words…

The elder’s I told you so voice pulled her back into the darkness of her gloom.

Just like a car needs fuel to keep going so does the body need food… photosynthesize.

Try and be what you are destined to be. A tree.

Blasting  those voices back into the void from whence it had snatched out

Reaching over – without much of a search

 Rustled her leaves  -A call  out for new bosom firefly friends.

A loud moan persisted from her innermost pit.

Hunger.

Hunger to be free in the form she still chose to be.

Chronic cramp. If only for the longing desire she had for her legs or wings to ease the pain of being motionless.

It wasn’t enough that she contributed towards sustaining other life species.

This stagnant obsession never seeing a sunrise from another part of the world again.

She looked down at her well-worn form.

How hard can it be to throw herself back to a time when she had legs?

Gills?

Wings?

a moments thought yanked her back like leashed like a dog to this home she felt no affinity .

Forlorn inhaled the scented berries, unravelling the mask of sight at the  ivy,

A glimpse an assortment of psychedelic fleurs initiating that it was time to wake up.

One more push, one more fight.

Forlorn no more she’d set herself free.