* This was written March 2019, and due to some technical error, was never published. My, how things can change in two years.

From fresh morning rain is born the damp smell and boundless energy of spring upon the breast. A juicy peach, a tart lemon, the Earth drips her honey upon us. And from boughs budding green call the birds, from the sweet nectar plants sprout pink, and blue and yellow flowers. The woods are deep now, and the morels grow. Streams are running again, the ice melted away as cold clear water undulates over rocks and sand. Mist hangs low in the mornings, dew upon the grass. The Earth is taking slow breaths as it holds on a little longer.

But what fools, we who think this is our own to experience; who think we are qualified to describe such splendor. For within our hearts runs a crack covered by no more than a flimsy veneer. Our feelings were shut off years ago, and now we only experience strange sensations where feelings once were until, after a while, we experience everything all at once and we are overwhelmed. Nothing is normal for us, nothing works. Life is a series of gut wrenching heartbreaks, one after the other, leaving us increasingly numb to this vicious and useless world. And the feeling of loneliness consumes us.

We watched ourselves disappear a long time ago. And this is what is left.