Once upon a time there was a woman with wild hair and fire in her eyes. She lived in a little house built on the side of a mountain overlooking a crystal blue lake. In the morning she would wake up, brush the wild strands of sleepy hair behind her ear and listen for the sound in the stillness of the beginning of the day. She would stretch and walk slowly out into the moist green grass and wiggle her toes and try an feel the energy connecting her soft skin with the life flowing up from the earth.

She would bend down slowly and pluck a tiny yellow flower and stick it up to her nose and smell the scent that she knows hasn’t been released from the cold little bud, yet she wishes for the smell and so she creates it in her mind and it smells like hope.

She sits on the edge of a log beside the deep blue lake, still as a sheet of paper in an unread book on a shelf, but she knows there’s a universe below those calm waters, and she likes to think her heart is hidden right in the middle, right where it’s the deepest and bluest and safest.

She’s safe but alone, she hums just to hear a sound of life out here, but the sound is silly in her ears so she tries to relax back into the hum of nature just waking up. A bird shakes his wings out in a nest above and she wishes he would whisper, good morning beautiful.

Her pupils constrict with the growing light of the sunrise and she refuses to be blind to the possibility of fulfillment even though there’s a void that she just can never seem to fill.

A deep breath releases a sigh…another day. A tiny snap draws her attention to the distance, a movement steals the breath from her lungs. Across the field of poppies they catch each others eyes and the emptiness falls away to sweet quicksand, absorbing devouring consuming everything and she swears she can hold her breath forever…