East of the fog, I settle in for silence.

I belong here — under broadleaf maples, atop the mottled moss and fallen feathers. The ground is wintry, quiet as a water skipper over the creek.

Weight shifting to the forest bed, slumber comes to mind. Tucking the gauzy white gown around my knees, I draw myself in.

I imagine a girl, staring at an ocean… unafraid of its vastness, unafraid of its depth. She stirs, diving into the aqua blue — past the urchins and otters, the tentacles of octopi.

She falls deeper still, surrounded by traces of bubbles left by the grace of her movements. She is down where there is no light, only the feeling of resistance between limbs and water.

Here, she sets up a house, lives on one breath taken — taken in the light with wide open eyes. Drifting across anemone, the skeletons of coral, she is asleep and dreaming — dreaming in the light and of one breath taken.

We surface together, the girl and I. A moth rests its powdery wings on our joined hands. We don’t move, we take it all in.

Setting amber resin on a small bed of stones we see fire, we watch. Smoke stretches in flight… a stirring of the very moment.

Spirals cast shadows we cannot see.