i will tell a story like you have never read before. a story of love and passion, of day and night, hands and feet, sky and ocean. words that glide gently across your eye and cascade free-falling into your soul. i tell you that i sit here and write this alone in the dark, it envelopes me, the screen like a camp-fire in the dark of night. staying concentrated on my words i ignore the way the pitch-black of darkness just over my shoulder calls me to look and stare forever. tormented by thought, i know that you share at least this with me. sit in the dark of night when you read this, listen to your inner voice tempting you to do things. Dance with a flower in your hand in this darkness until your eyes crave the coldness of night before you begin to read the story that i write. Please, you must delve into what i speak of and feel as if nothing surrounds you, until the walls around you no longer exist. Now reach up into the air and pick a strawberry. . .hold it close to your nose and smell it, smell the sweet bitterness. squeeze it until it mashes in your hands and swirl it across your face, like you swirl in mesmerizing twirls across the room. Hear a creek or movement in the room with you? Do not look, hold steady and follow me on this journey of a story. . .do not be scared but embrace the cold, fear and solitude. You must become part of the story, you must become the words, do not react to fear or feelings of the energy approaching you, be it dead or undead. i tell a story of loneliness and love, emptiness and caressing, of kissing tenderly and crying all the while. sadly, i tell a story too far gone to matter now my night-time reader. we have both descended to depths from which we may never return. You possibly. . . me, never.

i clenched brown earth in my hands and let it sift through my fingers,

what remained in my clinched fist were small rocks and strings of dry grass,

i never felt more alive with my hands dirty and muddy instead of clean holding synthetic plastics and cheap processed metals,

i raised my hands and did not smell perfume or manufactured aromas,

painted creations that melt with sweat under the sweltering sun. . .

how i had neglected earth and myself for so many years,

making a small hole in the soil i stood in it and planted myself like a plant and covered my feet and ankles with brown earth, bugs and earthworms.

raising my arms to the sun there i stood browning with the sun,

nestling in shadows under the moon,

birds nested and picked away at my skin and eyes, ears and tongue,

wasps nestled in my nose,

butterflies emerged from my ears every season and fluttered about before disappearing from sight,

a bee hive descending from my chin, beetles nestled and used my skin as a blanket,

my roots stretched deep into the earth and became entangled with others,

i had lost all my senses and yet,

i was alive like never before,

and so never did i again weep. . .