VITA [2021 UPDATES]

,,Rumbling Roots''

I used to fear all that which was green and spindly.

I couldn't walk past the small chartreuse shrubs that littered the path before me. My mother couldn't park our little white car by the lavender-stained trees of springtime.

The plants made me scream.

The way their branches looked, the way they were shaped, like watercolors threatening to run together.

The way they twisted, just for me, as if they were reaching...

They wanted to take me.

They wanted to pull me home.

They bobbed in the wind, as if nodding, reassuring. They promise they'll take care of me.

In my later years, I read of faerie folktale in which human children with fae blood inside them would be sought out and brought back to their own realm; and I remembered my fear. I remembered the way I'd scream, shrill and afraid.

Why did I fear them?

Why wouldn't I go with them??

They won't take me back, now. I'm corrupt and unchangeable. I'm a tainted human being.

There must have been a reason. I knew something, I remembered being there, conversing with these beings.

I made my choice to stay with the humans.

And here I will remain, until I don't.