Thirteen minutes to fill a capsized void. A laundry list of worry as the clock ticks in some kitchen bluebird hung neatly in the window and looking out onto the pleasant yard. Gas jaw dryer waits alone in the basement. Grandma’s caw caw like a crow beckoning me back inside. But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be pulled into a world I do not understand. Pulled into a world that makes me feel like I am upside-down and inside-out. The heaviness of all this burdened breath. I step into the woods and everything disappears.

I remain silent in the doldrums drum. Late autumn tree limbs are black and crooked against the sky. An opal sky. Like a ring in some lost wooden chest from eons ago. That heavy sigh on my soul dissipates in the woods. The woods are an escape from reality. The woods keep me hidden and safe. I gather wood and make a fort. I sit there and breathe, the world at bay. It’s just too much out in the real world. I have so much to do but can’t do any of it because I am so overwhelmed. Far better to hide in the woods and catch my breath, to lie beneath the sky, tenderize my banging heart, smell the leaves littered on the ground as antiseptic. Money falls from the heavens like snow, then melts and disappears. The sun is beginning to dip, the air is getting colder and so I make a fire. The crackle, the smoke, the orange flame… They are my companions. The wind and the winter snake move along. I could never get on top of anything in this world. I always slide back down to the bottom. Now the stars crack open and the world howls for me. The search is on to merely put me in shackles. The demolition doom of it all crackles over my transistor radio. Riots, plagues, and greed run amuck. Doomsday. Candle flame. A momentary fall to the other side of hypnotic magic to bereave the soul of  all its worth.   

By

Aaron Echoes August