Kypos

There were days when all I did was wake up and descend into the garden. Kneeling into the loamy, lost amidst the verdure—feeling Gaea reclaiming me as my breathe pulsated true. Sinking hands into succulent soil, grasping at the coarse richness of the earth, I was content, blissfully unguarded in the disarming beauty. I felt the air surround me, watched life sprout triumphantly, I was the harvest awaiting my time. The sun scalding my back, blackening skin, sweat tasting exotic in its righteous sting; I remember smiling at the sundress girls laughing in there skipping gaits. There was a time when life was rollicking in the days, letting sunshine blur the time— numbers merely a coordination of lines in hindsight.

We traveled to the grocery store in the winding, perilous mountain roads. Olive trees bent squiggly cartoons, chasing horizon into the next secluded world. Every town a microcosm, we surrendered before the circus assault of life, littering amidst our plights, every beehive motion buzzing the thrush of purpose. You grasped my hand in that parched wrinkled glory, letting wisdom speak through it, assuring me in foreign tongues that the moment was all we had. We would bundle up and meander back, watching the roads swerve into to heavens. The strange greenery and livestock sounds creating the chorus as that chirping voice of mine pestered questions with no answers. You were solemn in your statue grace, astutely surveying in the casual authority of this place—you told me harvests were built out of the backs of men, toiling their life with the bartering earth.

We arrived back at the ramshackle simplicity of home; windows flung open to coax the breeze, sunlight filtering in through the porous windows leaking light— the damp feel of the shade in the secluded groves of the house. Nothing compared to the pebbly trail of broken squares, leading home into the earth’s womb. Traversing chicken-wire fencing, exulting into the neighboring windows, I burrowed back into the earth and begged her forgiveness for our easy sinning breathes.