Sometimes, if I close my eyes and think very hard, I can feel the way that I felt when I was first given my freedom back. I can feel the wind, hear the crickets, taste the humidity in the air.
I close my eyes tight against the wind, my knees slowly bending to reach the ground. My eyes begin to adjust to the brightness of the sun as I become familiar to the heat upon my skin. Sweeping my hand across the grass, I cannot help a blissful grin. It has been many years since I had even seen grass, let alone touched it, smelled it. I sit down fully, my bottom sinking in the soft earth. The grass ripples about me, tickling, while the wind continues to blow.
That day, the world behaved as if it were stirred, confused, by my presence; it behaved as if I did not belong there. And, I'll agree, in some ways, the world was correct. After all, it hadn't seen me in quite a while, and it was a bit of a rude greeting.
I tear up tufts of grass in fistfuls, feeling the dirt and the rocks roll between my palms. I soon become murky, my skin tainted with the natural dark swirls, enveloping me until there was nothing left but earth.1136Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgYjWYJKsyk
Although I can feel the senses and the memories of that day, I cannot feel or begin to explain, even now, the burning in my chest-settling into my bones, pumping through my heartbeats-that erupted upon my return to the outside world. Throughout my entire life, before then and since then, I have never felt more confident about the fact that I am alive. There were no doubts-I was alive, as alive as the earth that churned naturally about me. It was both the first, and the last, time in years that I would feel such a way.
I hadn't realized that the worst part of my life was not yet over.
ns 15.158.61.46da2
