The ruins around which we gathered
were smaller than we’d expected. The photos that upon a cursory glance had seemed to express views from mountain tops and precarious paths, had, by generous estimation, been taken from a stepladder, or perhaps a milk crate. What we all came to see, the central figure we had thought to be hundreds of feet high was a stepping and golden pyramid. We had all seen it so often in movies and documentaries we could all picture it with our eyes shut. But what no photo could capture and what none of us knew to expect, was the sand. After we removed our packs leaving outlines of sweat on our shoulders and backs, we kicked off our boots and peeled off the thick woolen socks that would have taken us up to the precipice we had planned for, our toes sank into the silken surface as into liquid as we paced around the tiny ruins. The pyramid in reality came up to my hip. It was curved, slouching off to one side like melting ice cream. We all looked to each other dusty toes and sweaty shoulders wondering: Had it changed, or had we all remembered it wrong? By Laura McCullagh
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When first I awakened in the lungs of the Earth
and I first felt the Earth take a breath, I was not made of matter one could see or could touch, but I was thought that could see and could feel. So when I awakened in the lungs of the Earth and I first felt the Earth take a breath, the lungs expanded, so pink and so clean and contracted around me again. Nine hours an inhale and nine again out I soon felt a heartbeat join in. Somewhere within my amorphous self a beating had decided to start. Confused, I cried out with no vocal cords and the Earth so kindly responded. She shared her thoughts and I shared mine glad for some form of companion. As I was conscious in the lungs of the Earth and she was sharing her mind I began to feel oceans wash over my surface in time with the breaths of air. I could feel the land move cracking, shifting, shaking, releasing deep within my depths. Through the mind of the Earth I could feel the sun warming me so kindly as I turned. I could feel the blanket of warm air wrapped tightly, safely ‘round my body. I could feel, in the lungs of the Earth something growing something shaping something becoming a force of its own. I am awake in the lungs of the Earth and I am beginning to take a form. I don’t know what I am but I can see what I’m becoming and so, I think, can the Earth. She is beginning to fear me and as I grow eyes I weep for her demise. For as I grow a body like a cancer in her lungs she has less and less room to breathe. One day I’ll climb out wretched, pale, and caked with dirt, to cast shadows on the ground. I’ll dive in the oceans, I’ll stomp up the mountains, and perhaps take a breath of my own. By Laura McCullagh |
AuthorWe are a group of multi-disciplinary writer-types who are committed to collective creation. Writing doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens at a table. Archives
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