Quinn Johnsson

Three Paces

There was little to be said about the slab of stone that stood at her feet. A green tinge had coated the outside of the stone, reaching up from the ground in thick tentacles of vines and moss, algae and other plant matter. These vivid green tendrils slowly faded as the stone stretched aware from the ground, fading into a deep grey. It was an unmarked stone. Or at least, she wishes it was. The earth was so clearly trying to reclaim this stone that stood before her, the plant life a sign that of the shame mother nature felt towards what she had created, what she had allowed to step foot upon her soil. But that is the point, is it not? To remember. The pain that we feel, the anguish that we toil in, to see that things within this world can not only be bad. They can be worse. They can dig into the tired outstretched threads of our soul trying to hold together all that we care for, all those we hold dear. And it pulls. It tears. It stretches you so thinly that you can’t hide your pain, and in the same breath you cannot reveal it to the world. If you try to fight against it, the pain will resist. Sometimes it resists a little less and for a brief moment you can feel a bit more whole. Other times the pain resists harder than you can ever hope to pull and new tears open up. And now the core of your soul is bared to the world, not out of desperation or choice, but out of the sheer rupture of your humanity as all your failed hopes and dreams and all your losses are laid bare and then immediately washed away by the scorn of those who cannot be asked to understand what you lost, nor can you ask them to.