/lit/ - Literature

>>10195586
The Rutland Girl

Do you remember how we would lie in my bed up in Burlington, watching movies and laughing while the world around us froze? There was one night it February, a favorite of mine that reached -40 degrees. It didn't matter, because you were there beside me. Actually, I think the cold only made me love you more.

I miss the heaviness of your body pressed against my own, the rhythmic rise and fall of your lungs with mine; that slow and intimate dance they did. I miss the push and pull of our breathing as you slept, moving me to tranquility like sea waves. I miss the weight of another person's life bearing down into my own, how with each subtle shift and stir you unconsciously told me that you were there to stay. I miss those small unspoken "I love you"s found in subtle motions.

Before I knew it, I had to leave, the heaviness of you, that realness anchoring us, evaporating into ethereal text messages and Facebook likes. It was not my fault that I got sick and had to leave, that I left you up in Vermont, out in the cold by yourself. Now that I'm somewhat healed, back from death, from what those men did to me, I no longer allow myself to be touched. I hate what they did, how through violations so fundamental, they made my soul ugly. How I hate that I hate to be touched, how it's not my fault that something so essential now causes such pain.

There is nobody in the world I'd want so close to me, nobody except for you. For some reason, even after what happened, it was always okay with you. If all I had was the fire that you are to warm myself by, I think I could learn to touch somebody again. I think it would be okay if the rest of the world were as cold as it was that night in Vermont, so long as you were there beside me.

>>10121594
I wrote this on my phone at 4 AM on Monday when I couldn't sleep. Is it any good?

Fargus grandifola

I remember what it was like, how I learned the nature of Beach leaves. I remember going for walks with my father, through those grey New England winters. 2015, 2016, yes those ones seemed especially colorless, when he would drag me outside into the cold for my own good. It was when I was in withdrawal. My legs would not listen to me. I fell forward onto them through the sleeping forest as if I were on stilts, up the icy rooted paths towards the water. My thoughts were not my own. My body, burning, crooked, crumbling, no longer heard my voice.

What makes the North American Beech Tree distinct is that it hails from the tropics. Long ago these giants wandered into a foreign land, gradually northwards into the cold from warmer climes. Lost in the snow so suddenly, they were forced to adapt, to survive. Unlike the maple or oak with their dark skins and bark ridges acting as radiators, the Beech is smooth, flat, and light. Here in the north, the Beech stands out. A stranger, there is no one in the landscape quite like it.

I have learned from books that this adaptation is to distribute heat evenly, to prevent deadly frost cracks from forming, but I believe differently. I believe the Beech looks this way because deep in its mighty trunk it remembers. As it sleeps under the low New England winter sun, that lazy egg yolk in the sky, it remembers home.

The Beech comes from a land where there is no winter, where leaves may live year round without a care in the world, gathering energy for years on end. Down there they always full, they are always green. No such thing exists up here in New England, not for these giants, so stranded in the cold. No, their leaves shrivel into pale white nothings.

However fragile they refuse to die, turned downwards on their stems like paper quaking in the wind, they are a sore sight indeed. However feeble, the Beech leaf holds a quiet strength. It never lets go, it holds on because in the tropics, because in spring, the leaves do not let go. It refuse to die because it remembers what once was, because it knows what again will be.

I remember being in withdrawal, what it meant to be paper thin, to flail in the wind and hang pale above the icy ground. I remember how I learned the nature of Beech leaves, how I smiled at them as I trudged on quietly through the snow.