nothing more to say

You are out here alone for the first time in weeks, and all you can do is look at the sky. The air is cool and weightless with a pale light, and as you reach the edge of the field, your absentminded half-run fades into uncertain footsteps. Why keep walking when the ground here is so soft and welcoming and perfectly silent?

The grass is taller than your head as you sit and watch long-stemmed plants become silhouettes against the sky. You think about yesterday, the freshly planted garden waiting to grow, how good the sun-warmed dirt felt beneath your fingers, and the memory triggers a tumbling mess of remembering and remembering and remembering. 

You remember that you miss being in unfamiliar cities, taking a lucky guess from a restaurant menu as your backpack pulls at the t-shirt you’ve been wearing for three days and music whispers from an overhead radio and strangers mutter to themselves and everything is loud and foreign and exhausting and silent and beautiful.

You remember that there are people with wonderful souls who care enough to write stories with you and talk on the phone for no reason at all and send surprise letters filled with midnight thoughts that make you miss everything. Their hearts are so big, even when all you seem to do is sink into the daily motions of rising and moving and closing your eyes, pushing the world aside and growing dangerously close to letting it fall.

You remember that you are not hands or eyes or a mind or a heart, you are a soul. Eternity is more real than anything, and you write those words on your hand every morning but you still forget, because being human is a tireless battle with an all-consuming selfishness that you can’t possibly win on your own and what can you do? What can you do but sit and be overwhelmed that there’s a grace so big that you could never escape it even though you try again and again to find a way to make it break?

There is a single planet hovering above the horizon, gold and astonishingly bright, and fireflies are coming to life as you stand and run as hard as your legs will allow, drowning in the wild rush of motion that pounds in your ribcage as you reach the top of the hill and see home. Your shoes are coming untied and you are empty in the most freeing way, as if you are clinging to nothing but the feeling of holding truth in your hands.

It seems the world is only that—the emptiness and the loose shoelaces and the fireflies. You decide that you will stand there forever, and the shadows settle, and there is nothing more to say.

Published by Clara

Amateur storyteller, photographer, and avoider of sleep. See more @ midnight-mind.com. :)

31 thoughts on “nothing more to say”

  1. oh my
    is it possible that i thought those exact same thoughts, 2 nights ago…?
    it wasn’t it a field though, it was only for a minute as I chased the puppy out onto the deck to make sure he was let loose for a minute before bedtime – i looked up at the stars for the first time in far too long and somehow every word you said above is what i thought of for the rest of the night
    the word is so bright – a flame in a dark room – but sometimes my eyes stray off of the flame and i feel the darkness and realize that there’s only one light worth searching for. and the people who will search for it with me are more precious than gold.
    but your words – summed all of that up in the most beautiful, haunting way.
    <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
    power to the local dreamer ||-//

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

what's on your mind?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s