Among Giant Leaves: Magical Realism

We Make Leaves Grow Better

She and Mar and I might move out of this village some day with our other friends and start over if Atar has his way.

As much as we love the brown of the land and the simple old ways, we like the sensation of the leaves in the jungle outside the window growing larger and bluer. We feel excitement rise through our legs.

We like it when the leaves brush softly against the walls, the noise sheering us of anything between us and vivid color, the sound of touch. We love leaning back and staring out the windows as the full moon makes everything's shadows deeper and edges quiver with silvery tinkles.

Just being together in the right mood takes us into more vivid scenes, whenever we just let go of the bad things and play everything else out and give in to the liquid scented flowing of rhythmic pleasures through our hair, along the skin of our arms, our necks, our spines and continuing above and below us, a line of light that shines melodically.

We love these visits. They're the way out of the world as it is, when it isn't going well.

We're why the plants growing in our village are so extravagantly lush. The existence of our world-together makes the plants grow better in the regular world. If we leave the land, the plants will be sad. If we stay, we can talk to any plants that remain, any trees Bortez lets stand. We can pet them and let them know we care. We can keep them strong.

The scene outside the windows grows into the best story we liked to tell each other when we were the same age. The details on the leaves grow almost painfully intense in their chiaroscuro, and everything in the room begins to show its shadows more blackly, its lights more richly, the shadows eating the edges, making them their own, the light parts growing burnished.

Just looking at one large flat leaf closely becomes like staring at oil stains in the rain turning into rainbow colored hard-edged complex shapes that tell your dreams.

The wind moves the leaves against us, pressing against our backs as if massaging our muscles, tired from pulling up roots, milking the goats, and pushing wheelbarrows around filled with dirt and stones. My shoes are getting worn out, so my ragged big toe nail is brown, uncovered, and it's getting wet as we walk among the leaves almost as tall as we are.

I don't even see her, just hear her brushing up against the plants as she walks, making the shh shhh as they caress her skin, making colors move along my ears, shh shhh shh.