Missing

Drawn II

My hand settled down next to my side letting an ant climb the mountain of my little finger. His path never slowed as he scaled from one digit to the next. I wove him over one and onto the next the way magician can a coin. Madga asked me how I seemed to talk to the animals and I chuckled.

It was easy enough to touch the side of my hand to hers and let the tiny creature begin his trek again on the weathered hand of my friend. I spoke to her of a little girl far away and long ago, of how she salved her loneliness with all she found in nature. The spiders and butterflies her closest friends. Snails and crickets became part of her mentors.

The elder woman let me wind my way through the story of Mirabelle without question while she watched the minuscule warrior traverse her palm. It was with a ragged inhale I finally drew it all together so that it had some rationale behind the long winded soliloquy.

"You see Magda, my mother told me when I was little that if we are still enough, quiet enough we can hear the petals of a flower open ... so I sat for a long time .. very still .. very quiet. I began to pass my time listening. I heard the sounds of the birds singing and the skitter of insects. The world around me opened up with sights and sounds I had never heard before." Slowly she eased her hand back against mine and I let the ant climb aboard once more. His journey was returned right where it started on the ground next to me. The elder woman pondered what I had said while I pondered the interruption I had created of the insect's original voyage.

"Did you hear a flower's petals open?"

"Not yet", was my reply.


more to come