"Gretchen, Buxton Woods, A March Afternoon"
A flurry of wrens startle past, half-mocking, half-inviting.
She detours off the main trail like her own thought breaking loose from her friends' conversation. They keep on walking and talking, voices rising and falling in the rhythm of shared stories and too much sun. Maybe they don't notice she's gone. More likely, they've just learned not to follow.
Cypress knees poke out of brackish water like crooked teeth, rising from the muck, reminding her who really owns the beauty.
Downhill now, careful steps on a moss-slick path. It's never clear whether she's trying to get closer to something she needs, or away from her distractions.
The magnetic sounds - the low croaks, the high whistles, the shimmer of something just beyond hearing - that attracted her get louder as she get closer to the water.
She doesn't expect to be understood. Her friends mean well, love her even. But their love is wide and social, stretched thin across dinners and group texts and too much weed. Hers is quieter. Thicker. When the hush calls, she goes. Not out of defiance, but need. A kind of need that's stuck in her lungs, just needing one good cough to hock it up and let her breathe deep again.
Branches twist and lift above her like the arms of a dozen grandmothers.
The air changes - damp and green, sprinkled with... is that cherry laurel? She crouches at the edge of the water, her palm in contact with the suface withought actually touching it. Spring presses against her, a wet and velvet thing.
A smell of salt and springtime. A symphony of frogs that doesn't pause when she joins.
She listens. Not for anything specific, but for that feeling of being among those who speak a different language but still make her feel heard. There's no need to explain. The trees nod knowingly. The mud welcomes the weight of her boots. A breeze lifts her dress over her head like a blessing.
This is the real conversation.