never again will I feel the same

Hannah Myers / 10 (BARE staff)

I walk into the Ohio feather-leafed forest,

my feet crackling with each step,

the dead bodies of old green

lying on top of moist-gut soil

ready to be decomposed

into dirt.

I look to the trees,

bare sticks poking from the soil,

their roots tangled between more roots,

spiraling out beneath the world

infinitely stretching to nothing.

I lean down and scoop

dirt into my hands,

and take a sour winter breath —

the remnants of summer —

and hear memory laugh.

I inhale my childhood once again,

and I finally let my body relax.

One day the trees will bud again

and the flowers will bloom from the mud,

but never again will I feel the same

as I did when I was young.