Just a Very Small Part of it

The hills stand crooked like two broken cups. And the sun burns at their edges making them glow.


Full round green grapes are hanging over a wood and wire gate. She is walking towards them while tall narrow stems of grass scratch at her ankles. But she does not notice because she is thinking of other things. In the distance young trees are growing while birds are searching for a place to rest.


Her mother is her older and wiser reflection who laughs in short and high-pitched chirps. When they are together people confuse them as sisters. Sometimes they still hold hands and when they do, it feels like nothing has changed.


She feels herself falling. Day by day and she finds it hard to keep up. Twenty-eight years and not a moment has passed that she wishes she can get back.


She pulls a a wide leaf from a thin young branch. As she walks she spreads the front of her hand across the leaf. Each of her fingers reach as they fill five ends of the leaf. She stops to turn her hand over, and as she looks down, with the leaf now spread atop her hand, she feels she is holding a light but full plate. Suddenly his hand comes down on hers and bends the leaf between her fingers and his. And then when he smiles at her, she smiles back.


Above these hills tower tall metal turbines that the wind pushes hard against. Their shadows criss cross the valley. As he lays his head on the cracked and dry dirt floor he says, 'Bella' and she sits next to him and hugs her recently folded legs.


Down below these hills is a small village. Most of the few stone buildings that remain-homes, cafes, family shops-are colored somewhere between pink and orange. Here there are angry dogs chained in derelict yards. And also here, lives her father whom for the last twenty-five years she has tried to hold onto the one memory she has of his face.


She crawls down towards him and in his eyes she sees the reflection of a woman lost.


Because time is a fleeting trick and because feelings change, they talk about the future and pray that this time, well this time especially, they can be the one exception.


He is a tree she has never seen-trustworthy, honest, kind. In his arms she will climb. And once she finds a comfortable place, she will then close her eyes.


He couldn't remember a life without her. They had met only three days prior. She dropped something and he was there to pick it up. He said hello and she smiled. A few hours later her phone rang and immediately she imagined there could be such a thing as fate and that her own life was just a very small beautiful part of it.





-Remoy