Friday, 5 July 2013

Hylophobia - the fear of forests

What makes us want to connect? We reach out desperately for the other, seeking out commonalities, a tiny niche where we can put down roots and grow. Like a creeper plant growing on the sturdy trunk of an ancient rainforest tree, we reach for sunlight, for air, with its support.

The day we met was like a hurricane. You blew in, a cloud of cologne and compliments and swept me up entirely. It’s a slow Sunday afternoon almost three years later and I think I've finally caught up. With your eyes closed and your breathing even, you almost look like someone I used to know.

I've grown over you like a moss, spun you into a web, woven you into a silk, turned you into something that can only ever me mine. You dream on but it is my blood that flows through your veins, you inhale with my lungs, your heartbeat is a mere echo of mine. I am the creeper plant and I have spread my thick, waxy leaves into your furthest branches. You are as much mine as I am yours.

You begin to stir and I lace my fingers back through yours, I send my green tendrils into your mind and will you to sleep. I’m still climbing, three years later. I’m still using your steady ever presence to grow. I’m slowing finding sunlight through your still, mottled shade.

Your light is my shade, the heat I feel is your cool, everything you miss, I will catch. You’re eyes open beside me.

‘I was dreaming,’ you whisper, ‘of...being lost in the rainforest.’


I smile because I've been lost in the rainforest since the day you appeared in my life and took me somewhere I've never been.

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