In Time, Freedom

When I was a child, I would slowly walk and enter into a familiar forest – it was my version of the deep, dark woods I see in movies and it was scary – so that all of my little body and all of your adolescent body would be covered. So that they wouldn’t find us in the deep woods and the dark secrets suspended in the recesses of childhood. In the middle, we meet and we remove all that would hinder. Then, they wouldn’t see us, because we were parallel with the soil. The fallen leaves would crack in your movement; the branches above would decide to be oblivious with the breeze in the forest. Though I never really glimpsed them, for they were obscured by your adolescent body. The minutes melted and in the melting, I would get confused as to finding what I find. Was it pleasure? Was it paralysis? Swift, sweet years would pass, an abundance of comings and goings, sufferings and stretches of bliss. Yet across time, I would never get ahold of answers. All I knew was that it was wrong. Never resisted what was never good. Very wrong. Scared a bit. Scared big time that they would know. Frightened to accept. Terrified to name it so I refused to take part in it.

It was never night, it was broad daylight, but we still made sure they wouldn’t see us.

I couldn’t remember faces. I couldn’t remember myself. Like a capsule of memory buried deep in that familiar forest. So that the light always reroutes, never seeming to meet the darkness and its forgotten secrets. But I recall the forest now, my female friend and I entering, bodies waiting for us in the shadows, and we would be swallowed up by the darkness, not knowing if we ever got out.