Notes From a Korean Girl Who Can’t Look in the Mirror for Too Long

November 18, 2024

Sia Han

i. I was a pretty child. The type of pretty that ensured that for every street of Seoul my mom would push me down in a stroller, there’d be a passerby who’d look over and begin to coo. “너무 예쁘다!” // “She’s so pretty!” “인형처럼 생겼어요!” // “She looks like a doll!” “남편이 외국사람이에요?” // “Is your husband a foreigner,” they’d ask my mom, excitement visible in their eyes. They were sure, after seeing my pale skin, light brown hair, and big, round eyes, that I was not fully Korean. Something different. Something exotic. Soon enough, my mom was offered a child modeling gig which she immediately declined. Her mother-in-law, though, quickly decided I was destined for greatness. Her plan for me was: Gain moderate success as a child model Go on to become Miss Korea Become a news anchor (as do most Miss Koreas because to be a female news anchor in Korea, you must foremost be pretty) Marry either a billionaire or actor Have 3 equally good-looking (grand)children I no longer live in Korea, speak Korean well, nor do I meet the height requirement to even enter Miss Korea. My hair and skin have darkened, my chin has jutted down and outwards, and my eyes have thinned like someone grabbed them by their edges and pulled. I like to think it’s my body trying to make up for lost time; That after years apart from my motherland, spent resenting my features and yearning for the cascading blond hair and blue eyes I saw on TV, it decided to take matters into its own hands. Nobody in America asks me if I’m a foreigner—they know. When I was younger, I used to have a nightmare. A nightmare that upon reuniting with her in Korea, my grandmother would hold me by the shoulders, look me up and down, and grimace. She’d shake her head, unable to mask the disappointment and pity in her eyes, and wonder where the future pageant queen she’d once held in her arms went. Now, I have a different nightmare. In it, I walk up to her in a busy airport and tap her on the shoulder. She turns around and smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes. She opens her mouth. “아, 죄송한데 제가 아는 분인가요?” // “Sorry, do I know you?” ------------------------------------------------------------- ii. When I was 13, after carefully examining my face, my dad lovingly rubbed my shoulder and said he would pay for any plastic surgery I wanted after high school.z It’s a common tradition in Korea for parents to give their children cosmetic surgery upon graduation. To grant their child the gift of beauty and thus hope for a better job, marriage, kids, and life. At 14, my biggest wish in life was for the snipping tool from Microsoft to exist in real life. Within the comforts of my room, I’d trace my finger around the innards of my face and imagine the excess skin and bones outside the small, delicate outline I’d drawn, completely melting off. I’d bring both index fingers up to my face and starting from right below my ears, drag them downwards till they met at a perfectly pointed V. Instead, I simply settled on waiting for my 18th birthday. I spent hours standing in the mirror—poking, prodding, and pulling back skin, trying to envision what my new face would look like. I had a checklist of all the operations I was planning on undergoing. Ones that would rid me of my giant forehead, monolids, slightly crooked nose, and sticky-outy ears (which earned me the affectionate accolade of “Dumbo” from my parents). But the one I anticipated the most was the one that would fix my long and “manly” chin. It was the one my dad anticipated the most, too. We were lying next to each other when I turned to him to ask what we’d eat for dinner, and he lightly caressed my jaw. With a sad smile reserved for funerals of distant relatives or whenever I cried, he looked at me and wistfully said, “You’d be perfect if it weren’t for that chin.” When I brought it up to my mom a few days later, she told me it was because he felt bad. That he felt guilty for passing on his chin to me. “The surgery, it’s- it’s his way of apologizing. Of making amends.” My dad was also a pretty child. Pale, round-eyed, and rosy-cheeked, he had been adored by everyone around him. By the time he’d entered high school, his hair and skin had darkened, his chin jutted down and outwards, and pimples littered his face (I often poked my fingers inside the small, lasting dents they’d left on his cheeks). His face had morphed into one unrecognizable from his past but eerily similar to mine. With my head in her lap, I pushed down a bubbling wave of guilt in my stomach and looked up at her. “What if I turn out like… him?” I felt her fingers scour my scalp, looking for new gray hairs to pull out. “You won’t. Everyone is ugly in middle school. They’re ugly as teens and become pretty in college.” “You don’t know that!” “I do. And it’s different for girls anyways.” “But what if it doesn’t get better? What if I’m…” I swallowed down a wave of horrible discomfort and near nausea. “Then you learn how to do makeup. You learn how to style your hair.” “But I don't want to do that. I want to naturally, like really be—” “Then get surgery.” I fell silent at the agitation in her voice. I yelped as she pulled out another hair. She sighed. “Why do you have so many? It’s because you’re stressed. Don’t stress about this. You’ll be pretty in college, that’s what happens to girls. Remember, beauty is pain.” ------------------------------------------------------------- iii. I always imagined that once I turned 18, something big would happen. The kind of movie makeover metamorphosis that nerdy girls in chick flicks from the early 2000s always underwent was the stuff of dreams. The idea that I had had some special, transformative beauty inside me all along, waiting to be unlocked and revealed to the world, had been what had kept me going all those years. I’ve grown a little taller and no longer look (as much) like a child trying to wear an adult’s skin, but to be honest, I don’t think much has changed. One of my better life realizations is that trends are Cyclical Complete bullshit. As of late, complaints about my giant forehead have been met with a stream of scandalized Korean. “What? You know how many people would kill to have a forehead like yours?” “Yea! People pay thousands of dollars for a forehead like that and you got it for free! You have no idea how lucky you are.” I wish I had something to say back to them. I wish the idea of having something “people would kill” for, didn’t make me feel giddy. I wish that a good or bad hair day wasn’t enough to make or break my whole week. Last night, my mom apologized. She said it was her and my dad’s fault for obsessing so much over my appearance when I was young. She compared me to a war general, yearning for the glory-filled days of his past and struggling to accept the invisibility of mundane life. “You wouldn’t care this much if you'd just been ugly.” I insisted that she was wrong, that my lifelong fear of becoming the reverse ugly duckling would’ve been there anyways, was always there. She shook her head and brushed strands of hair out of my face. “Someone who’s never had it, won’t care. But with you, it’s like… it’s like you fell in. You fell in and you’ve been trapped ever since.” If there’s one thing those chick flicks got right, it’s that insecurity never really goes away. Except now, instead of a constant, merciless barrage of waves, it’s ripples in a pond. They’re easier to ignore but they linger. All it takes is one small rock, a bad selfie or a glance in the mirror that lasts a little too long, to set the whole pond in motion. I had a dream, a new one this time. I stand in a white room brimming with emptiness. A man who radiates the feeling of being the only person in the room in on a joke stands behind me. He casts no reflection in the mirror. He hands me a scalpel and nudges me forward. As I step closer, I think to myself that I have no idea what I actually look like. My left eye is lower than my right. This is my face. My hairline is shaped like the East Coast. This is the face I was born with. My chin is too long. This is the face I will die with. I close my eyes and tenderly clutch the scalpel’s handle with both hands. I press the flat side of its blade against my cheek. It’s warm.

Goodbye

Luca Raffa

May 21, 2025

August/ September 2015 Although the nervous sweat evaporated from my skin in the high August afternoon, the driving sting of my salty fear still remained. The heat burnt me like it did the bitter grass in the fields—rusting under the merciless, almighty sun. On the eve of September, the rattling sighs of crickets hiding in the fields welcomed me; the crickets sang about death so beautifully. Amongst the fields, there it was: this cluster of white buildings, which appeared to me like castles. I walked towards the building with the golden bell, bright as freedom—it could almost be confused with the sun. The green doors of hope opened, and a man stood to greet me. His smile was big. He shook my weak hand: a firm, practiced grip. As our hands fell to our sides, his rolled up sleeves exposed the hair that grew wildly on his arms. He wore a blue dress shirt that erupted with sour sweat all over, tucked into a new pair of khaki pants and cinched by a leather belt to keep his belly in. Like me, I learned that Mr. Bates was new to this school. And at least that was something we could share. That September, Mr. Bates taught me and my boisterous peers how to greet one another. Give them your eyes. Give them your hands. Give them your words. I rehearsed over and over and over again until I had memorized this perfect display of human decency. Mr. Bates was teaching me how to navigate the spectacle of human interaction. He was teaching me how to belong in this world. * October/ November 2016 A layer of frost crusted the fresh decay of leaves that, by the evening, would continue to rot in the late October mist. The wind in the dark was nightmarish. It brought shivers to the trees, whose sick leaves would slowly dance to the ground, awaiting the night’s nip of winter. Like the trees I often trembled, alone in the dark and blind with nervousness. Stumbling up stairs, I would enter a bright room fresh with the rousing exuberance of youths I did not know. On opposite sides of the ballroom, the boys in their blue suits pretended to be men while the girls glistened in a resplendent rainbow of dresses. This was etiquette class. I learned how to waltz. The stiff clutch of my tie eased when I finally managed to approach a girl to dance during the first lesson. The question, sinking in my throat, at last burst forth frantically. My eagerness became our awkward foxtrot. She wore a taut black dress that complimented her smoothe, dark hair. Below her soft and secretive eyes, her face was scattered with rosette freckles all over. She leapt like a leopard into the night, forever disappearing from me––nameless. Each week, I danced with a new girl. I practiced introducing myself respectfully, meeting her elegant eyes, shaking her hand gracefully, moving my feet, touching my left hand to her shoulder, touching my right hand to her hip, swaying, dazzling. * December/ January 2017 At dawn, the dim glow of the moon was fleeting, the stars fading. The soft snow slept on the driveway like the powdered sugar that dusted my breakfast. The avenue was still, and everyone was inside still asleep. The wind yawned, releasing a sweet puff of life that wandered freely. The sun kissed its warmth on my neck. The cold embraced me too. At Christmastime, my family would drive ten hours to visit my grandmother. She was a round woman with a bullous nose, sharp eyebrows, and defiant eyes. She would summon me and my brother with a sputtering yell––boys, the food is ready––her way of saying that she loved us. The suitcases huddled ready in the shut trunk. The muffled sighs of the car and the blue fumes rising upward became one with the cool winter sky. The icicles stuck to the edges of the undercarriage melted into a puddle of slush black as charcoal. The car’s fresh leather seats were warm, causing the frost on my window to melt away and reveal the figure of my grandmother, small and motionless in the frame of the door, watching us leave. She was waiting for our promise to return again. Goodbye. *** In our youth, we are taught how to greet one another. It is an act of maturity, an act of integration into the world, an act of becoming. We learn to be actors who play our parts with projected voices and firm, dramatic motions. Our masks and costumes are charming. We follow the script.We perform ourselves. Yet no one ever teaches us how to say goodbye. Perhaps, letting go must be a truth then: a testament to our character, to our love, to the depth of our souls. We do not need to go to school or to ballroom dancing to learn how to say goodbye. It already glows in our hearts. Ultimately, life is an act of letting go. It is standing alone in the open doorway, the cold creeping inside, and silently watching those you love leave for new adventures. It is welcoming the uncertainty of when you will see that person again. It is the comforting pain of their absence, and the sweetness of your longing. It is the fateful pleasure of the unknown.

Paranoid in Detroit: A Retrospective Airport Guide

Elsa Eastwood

April 28, 2025

In the beginning, Delta Airlines created a 10am flight to Los Angeles, and I arrived early at my gate, enveloped in a net of peace, anticipating a night in my childhood bed back home, and the sun rose over Providence. But then the Intercom said, “Let there be a $1,500 airline voucher for any travelers willing to transfer to the 5pm to Los Angeles through Detroit,” and I awoke. Too good to be true? Perhaps. This morning would mark only the beginning of my chaotic pilgrimage. Here’s what I wish I had been told: Accept the voucher, but know what you’re getting into. Don’t lose yourself in visions of a restful Christmas vacation—you must first earn it. Your new flight is in nine hours. Text your dad: no longer getting home today, sorry. Listen to the charismatic British-Canadian rugby player you meet at the gate when he informs you that no one wins anything by standing patiently in line. Muscle your way to the front for your updated boarding pass. Find creative ways to pass the time while you wait. Stare at the stretches of gray carpet, the seas of hurried bodies. Treat yourself to a $16.50 meatball sandwich, which will inevitably taste like wet cardboard. Find a nook and doom-scroll into oblivion as time crawls, turtle-like, past you. Apologize to the universe for cursing the droning intercom voice that announces each delay. Airport attendants have dreams and families. Attempt to restore your karma. Once finally on board, strike up a conversation with the young, bearded Amazon employee in the neighboring seat. He may buy you a small bottle of airplane bourbon and confess to you his aviophobia. Comfort him, but know you’ll be on the tarmac for another three hours and that he’ll be drunk enough by then not to notice he’s airborne anyway. When your phone informs you midair that your connection out of Detroit has already departed, accept the truth: no airport sprint nor desperate plea will get you home today. And don’t say you hate Detroit. It doesn't want you there either. After you land, an agitated agent at a Delta “Help” desk will claim she can’t rebook your flight or help you find a place to sleep. Ignore her. Get a second opinion and an off-the-freeway motel voucher. Don’t talk to irritable strangers at 1am on the airport shuttle en route to said off-the-freeway motel. Hop across the lily-pad stains on the lobby carpet to lighten the mood. On the way to your room, try not to picture bodies in a range of consciousness behind each door or an eerie solo violin accompanying you down the hallway. If you must, have a makeshift weapon ready. You’ll hear water running when you enter. The bathtub is full, the faucet stuck. Estimate how long you have before a flood consumes the room. Futz with the thermostat to no avail. 30°. Nice work. You’re sleeping in your clothes. Never rely on a fatigued and hungry mind. There is no skeleton hand on your pillow, no gelatinous tentacles emerging from beneath the bed. That languid, naked woman on the windowsill? A trick of the light. (Deadbolt the door twice.) Sacrifice your vigilance for some shivery sleep. Imagine yourself somewhere more forgiving—the dentist’s office or DMV waiting room, the kitchenware aisle of a suburban IKEA. Wake up to a 5am alarm. Brave the snowstorm, the lonely motel muffin, the shuttle back to the airport. Drag your bag the final few yards. And once you’ve collapsed into your seat and let your eyes fall closed, find solace in the Los Angeles skyline appearing against the darkness of your eyelids, the weight of a new $1,500 in your pocket, as the plane wheels roll steadily forward.

Language Undone

Juliet Corwin

April 15, 2025

I was born in silence. In the first year of my life, my hands and my face were my only ways of communication. My curiosity was not limited by a lack of sound, and as an infant I absorbed the colors, shapes, textures, tastes, smells, and vibrations all around me. I spent much of my time on the floor—in part because walking is a skill that takes practice, but also because lying on the floor is the best way to experience the world. Through the floor, my body learned to recognize my father’s footsteps, a closing door, my sister’s excited hops, the calm ring of my mother’s laugh. I learned the different meanings of eyebrow and lip movements, which twitches meant worry and which meant laughter. My parents, both hearing, spoke endlessly to me, pressing my hands to their throats so I could feel the changes in pitch, the pauses in their words. I remember the warmth of their skin, the steady hum of their voices against my palms. They picked up elementary signs to teach me, pairing them as best they could with the words streaming from their mouths. My first signed word was “shoes,” two fists knocking together—sometimes I wonder if this wasn’t just an accidental bump of my knuckles. My pudgy fingers learned to fly. Soon my words soared through the air, my sentences sprouting wings, flying higher than my parents’ unpracticed eyes and hands could reach. But Mmy parents made the decision to raise me with hearing technology in the hearing world. This was by no means an easy choice, but the world has not been a kind place to Deaf people, and has been particularly unkind to Deaf women. My parents wanted their daughter to be safe, to be autonomous, to feel that this life was mine to create. *** I was one year old the first time a surgeon drilled into my skull. In a cochlear implant surgery, a small area of the skull is shaved away to create an indent in the shape of a tiny upside-down snowman, an exact match to the internal magnet which is placed in the indentation and cemented in with bone paste. Attached to the magnet is a string of electrodes, which are wound around the cochlea in place of cilia, the tiny hairs along which soundwaves dance to the brain. As a result of a recessive gene, GJB2 Connexin 26, my cochleas cannot receive sound properly. The cilia that transmit waves to my brain are absent, broken, bent, or lonely. Through two surgical procedures for cochlear implants, my cilia were replaced by electrodes spun through the spirals of my cochleas, which now receive electrical signals from an external processor. This leaves the bones in my ears without a job. I hope they are not too bored. There are three bones in each ear, named for a hammer, anvil, and stirrup. They bring vibrations from the eardrum to the inner ear by turning them into waves that can travel through the membrane and fluid of the inner ear. Their main function is to bring sound to the cochlea, which connects to the brain. The bones in my ears, dedicated to connecting my eardrums to my cochleas, must be very confused. Soon after getting hearing technology, my preschool teachers held my hands in my lap and I was taught to speak using only my mouth. For Deaf children that are turned into deaf children—assimilated into the hearing world through the use of hearing technology and verbal language—there is debate around continued use of sign language. Some believe that a focus should only be placed on spoken language, as it is assumed that young children will default to sign language if given the opportunity to use it freely. The first time a scalpel graced my skin it un-capitalized a letter, grazed my not-yet formed identity. The second time a scalpel stroked my flesh it cut away a language in my fingers. *** The human hands generally consist of twenty-seven bones each. Eight carpal bones, formed in a row between the wrist and the palm, five metacarpal bones reaching up to the fourteen phalanges that hide in the fingers. These bones are carefully situated so that the hand is flexible and can rotate freely. Two sets of twenty-seven bones working in tandem are used in nearly every human activity. My two sets of twenty-seven bones grew wings, flew too close to the sun, and were left stunted and slow. In my oralist early-intervention education program, my hands were not free. My eyes were trained to read lips and to maintain eye contact at the same time. I still rely on lips about thirty percent of the time, and more in poor acoustics. Reading lips is a skill that I tire of sometimes. Each person, regardless of their language, moves their lips and shapes their sounds differently. Each person I meet means a new pair of lips to learn. As a toddler I was presented with posters and books of cartoon faces squeezed into scary expressions, rewarded with smiles and cheers when I spoke and left my hands behind. Every year since I was one, I have been led into listening booths and told to repeat the words coming at me through a speaker until the heavy, sound-proofed door opens again. This process typically takes about three hours in total, and leaves me exhausted and drained for the next two days. I often grow increasingly tired as the tests go on, and I begin responding to beeps that haven’t played or saying nonsense words back to the speaker. *** I’ve always found it difficult to speak up. I’m not sure how much of this is due to being a deaf woman. I don’t trust my mouth to make the correct sounds. I am scared to take up space in the hearing world, terrified of what it may mean to remind those around me of my disability, of my constant accommodation of their language and lifestyle. Sometimes, a word will slip out of my lips coated in the Deaf accent I still sneak back into at night, and I will pray it goes unnoticed. I grew up being complimented on my clear language, on how invisible my disability was. My preschool classroom was a praise paradise, so I fell in love with hiding this part of myself. I was good at it, and even at that young age I understood that in order to succeed, hearing was the best thing I could be. I used to dream of waking up to noises instead of light. From a young age I knew I was supposed to speak up when I needed more. I was taught to advocate for myself, to explain my disability and to demand accommodations from reluctant ears and swatting dismissals. I was never taught how to say no to a man who was determined. I didn’t know how to run away from someone who showed me affection, even when he became an aggressor, attacked me in a way that seemed far too easy and familiar. Eighty-three percent of disabled women are sexually assaulted in their lives. I had watched a boy turn into a predator, naively believing that I didn’t make for easy prey. I fell into the hands of a boy on the hunt and found myself helpless. In all my training of how to gracefully need more, I hadn’t been taught when to walk away. Under his grip, my hands forgot how to fight as quickly as they forgot their first language, lay limp by my sides the way they were trained to. My protest, rough against my lips, lay in the air and settled along the dust on my cheek, pressed to the floor. *** When I was nineteen, a pulsing tattoo gun scraped along my right hip. A black-ink fine-line daffodil. I was in Minnesota, fighting to keep my body with me. I was a few months into my first year of college, in denial about the flashbacks that kept me awake and the nausea I couldn’t push down when I kissed new people. I told myself he couldn’t follow me here, told myself that was enough, and called my new ink a sign of how healed I was. Daffodils represent forgiveness and rebirth. A type of starting over that accepts the past. I was trying hard to be a daffodil. I wanted to be a flower, open and bright, standing tall on my stem. I wanted to cover up the handprints I felt along my hip with petals and leaves. The artist was rude, which felt unfair since she was dragging a needle through my skin. She started the appointment an hour late, glared at me when I presented a sketch of what I hoped the flower would look like, and silently drew her own version instead. Hers was much better than mine, and I quickly admired the purple outline along my skin before settling in for the session. She didn’t ask me what the tattoo meant, just told me to sit still. At one point she asked me, annoyed, if I was holding my breath. I was. Over the years I have collected more ink, sprinkled over me in whispers. Behind my ear hides a black-ink fine-line outline of the sun. My earliest memories are silent and bright. Fuzzy rays of warmth, dust floating and illuminated in front of a glowing window. The few mornings that I am left to wake without an alarm, I open my eyes to a shift in the light. The first moments of the day are my tired blinks and the beckoning brightness.

House Home

Anonymous

April 12, 2025

House, Home I would sleep in the woods every night if I could. To the times when the morning sun's motherly warmth caressed my face, which peeked out from the top of my sleeping bag. My eyes opened slightly as my ears were entranced by the Mountain Chickadee’s singsong tune somersaulting through the forest, and I threw on my jacket to combat the crisp mountain air. Unzipping the tent, my lungs filled with the purity of pine and burning logs coming from the small fire my father was nursing to warm up frigid backpacking hands. Later I spun around in a circle and pointed to the highest mountain peak I could see, stating that we must reach the top. Leaving the campsite we climbed higher and higher into the thick Evergreen forest; jumping through boulder fields and laughing our way to the summit where the sky was unlimited and all ours. We did snow angels in the July leftovers that we supposed stayed unmelted for the sole purpose of our moment above the clouds. As the sun began to tire and drop from the middle of the sky, we found a lake fed by waterfalls, gurgling pools twirling down a snow melt stream. There was a rock near the center of the lake and we knew that we had to swim to it. My mother smiled as she took out her camera and 1, 2, 3, we grabbed each other's hands and jumped. Our bodies paralyzed with the shocking cold, we gulped for air as instinct and adrenaline propelled us further and further away from the safety of dry land. We reached the rock and flopped down, soaking up the sunshine’s radiating warmth. Our hearts beat raw against our chests, our skin painted with goosebumps and mud. We wondered if any other humans had stepped onto this rock island deep in the Rocky Mountains or if we were the first ones. Our own little palace. Our own little world. One where we could write the rules. All ours. +++ She stood outside, her backpack coated with a layer of dirt and twigs that had decided that her pack was a much more sensible home than the mountain trail she had hiked alone earlier that day. Her head rested on the wall of the house behind her and she traced her fingers across the bricks, feeling the peaceful protection of where she had been break into leftover memories drowning in the corners of her mind. Her heart quickened in anticipation and she counted to ten before turning around, taking one final deep breath, and sliding open the side door of the house. The screaming echoed off the panes of the windows and she felt her fists tighten until her knuckles turned white. She hesitated slightly, eyes glued to the floor, before forcing herself to go inside the house. Mom, Dad? Go to your room. +++ In elementary school, my class would go camping in the mountains twice a year. I would pack my sleeping bag, sleeping pad, extra clothes, and a backpack, a daypack as we would call it. It was filled to the brim with everything you would ever need for any kind of mountain weather: sunscreen, a rain jacket, a fleece, gloves, a camelback, a sun hat, a winter hat, rain pants, snacks, and sunglasses. I would wait by the door of my house jumping up and down in excitement until I was taken to school. We went rafting down the Colorado River, biking through the red crushed arches of Moab, and backpacking in the Rocky Mountains. Returning with my face covered in mud and a head packed full of stories that would sooner than later turn into dreams. +++ She got to her room and shut the door softly, hoping her parents would forget that she was there at all. Looking up at the ceiling, the lights appeared to twinkle through the tears flooding her eyes, though without the comfort of the stars that blanket the mountain’s night sky. The walls of her room reverberated with the growing terror in her heart as she shoved a pillow over her ears to muffle the repeated sounds of strikes echoing through the kitchen. She wanted nothing more than to go but was too scared to move, sickened with the hope that her mother’s rampage would end before it was turned towards her as it so often was. That one day, the yelling and pain and tears would stop and her house could become a home. +++ Why are you in the woods? My friend texted me and I turned my phone away from my face, replaced instead with the dark sky and steadfast trees. I marveled at the fact that I somehow always ended up here. As if my feet carry me to safety if my mind starts to flood too deep into sinking swirls. Tears rolled down my face and I used the cuff of my shirt to wipe them away, softly accompanied by a lullaby conducted by the echoes of the trees. Because when you are in the woods, what does real life really mean anyways? Back to the primitive being of true humanity. Finding food and water and wood to stay alive. Telling stories you would never think to share if your mind wasn’t given the opportunity to wonder. Where the natures dance becomes your family and the trees your home. Please let me come. You are not a burden. Okay. And so he ran down to the edge of the woods and together we lay side by side, the stillness between us holding more than words ever could, the smell of moist wood and falling leaves lulling us into a safe security that tomorrow could never bring. +++ Sometimes she doesn't sleep in a tent but opts instead to sleep outside under the stars. The quiet surrounding her is a safe embrace as if nothing can hurt her as long as stay within the limits of the trees. Because no one is angry in the mountains. +++ In the woods I am home.

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