A woman with no way out

Rosemary, thyme, sage, basil, and other herbs hang from the ceiling, grow from the wooden floorboards, rip apart curtains hiding dusty panes of glass, crack and break apart the only remaining door in this rotting house and cling to the woman in the center, a woman whose body is made of this place, rooted to the center of the floor, staring towards the hearth as if it is filled with warmth and memories, ones only she can see with eyes ancient as time and green as the plants wrapping her in thorn-arms and petal-hands. She whispers, slowly, like rings growing within trees, these words ripple out from her in pools of sounds, like the creaking of dead wood in the wind,

“Leaves in the desert,

sand in the trees,

wind in the ocean,

water in the breeze,

hand on the heart,

head between knees,

I knew all,

and none of these….”

Voice echoing out from where she lay, shifting into the ground, sinking towards the dirt barely-visible between the boards, through the grass-carpet, through the dense fog of questions lying low to the floor.

Why, the air seems to breathe.

Tell us why, the animals say to her, beady black eyes staring at her broken-by-too-much-strength-body.

But she could not respond, too absorbed in the glassy stare of the eons she has sat.

“Since the stars….”

She would say.