Casey Gilfillan

I slip into the day like a lapse in time. The sky is gray and blue and specific to no particular hour. The wind speaks in a rustling whisper through the leaves of the trees, quieting and then quickening without pattern. I hear the gentle hum of the brush through the blaring volume of my headphones. It beckons me to remove the device, and suddenly I am alone in the dull, green basin of the forest. The music plays quietly, distantly from my hands while my ears attune themselves upwards, to the lush soundtrack circulating. 

Upwards, to the muted sky and checkered lighting of nature’s canopy. I give myself to the feeling of the moment as it passes over the tips of my fingers, fleetingly through my sensory detection. My footprints crunch over the cemetery of fallen twigs and pebbles that now live on the main path. Onward slowly in the ambience of the swirling wind and chattering birds, the whooshing of the leaves becomes a numbing agent. Turned swiftly by the hands of atmosphere, I am a devout listener; I am beholden to what lies beneath calamity. 

Open arms into the vacuum that is without the bustling, squealing, and cantankery of context. If I had the key to such a cage, I would surely swallow it. For now I rattle glamorously at the bars; they hold nothing except my attention span, yet the body follows. I know it is wrong to be a prisoner of ignorance even if only for the peace it brings; the weight of morality has become a silent mouthing of words. The meaning is lost, having been lifted and tossed into the wiry, entangled sea of branches that yearn to entomb. The sky, now pale and drained in its grim expanse, bellows something softly as I return the music to my ears.