Lisa Johnson Long

And So It Is...

Ana sat beneath the sprawling oak surveying the expansive California hills, the air crisp and hazed in the winter light, colors vivid, yet muted, blending hills into the horizon. She coiled her long black hair around her fingers and tied it in a messy knot held together by her pencil. In her lap, she traced the cover of her notebook. Its worn, dog-eared pages told the tale of the years of stories it contained. A perfectly, flat paper wrapper floated from the pages with carefully handwritten rows of text across its width. Ana recalled with a distant memory that the wrapper had held chopsticks from her favorite sushi restaurant on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street. A lifetime ago she had scrawled words of hope and longing, a wholly different human had sat at that teak counter, with nothing but glistening eyes and naive hubris.