Gaia

A forest lays ahead of you, and a forest lay behind you.

How much forest there is you don’t know,

what’s on the other end? Light? Dark? Pain and sorrow?

Yet to think about the end seems distant, now you only see a vista of gloaming tenebrosity, as dusk bounces fractals of lambent fulguration off of gently swaying eucalypts.

You can hear squalls of immense downpour in the canopy above, yet no water can infiltrate past the chuppah of leaves and branches, creating a phantasmagorical reality, almost detached from your mind itself,

as what you hear seems to misalign with what your brain says.

As the dusk finishes its nightly transition to darkness turns the biblical panorama into a Kafkaesque prison, obscuring all forms of light.

No longer can you see ahead of you, and no longer can you tell if you’re moving in the correct direction. It’s all guesswork as the Gaia gazes upon your blind desperation,

in a way that only omniscience can.

She watches as you mistake vines for monstrous tentacles, seemingly harmless branches turn to razors as you leave them in your hasty wake.

As each insignificant wound snowballs with frequency, you wonder why you’re fleeing.

Fleeing? From what? A past mistake? A future mistake? Fleeing? Or simply traveling?

Welts and incisions accrue upon your appendages as you stumble over branch and bramble.

All of this makes you wonder why even move? Surely moving at this point would be ludicrous? And where is everyone else? Are you alone? Or are people around? Just beyond the caliginous radius? If you yell will they hear? Or are they as impaired as you?

Some say that the easiest way out of the forest is to dig. But the ground is hard, compact, or mud. To dig six feet here would be almost as hard as finding the accursed border.

It's tempting.

Very tempting.

As you sit at the base of a monstrous Antarctic Beech, its ancient trunk propping you up.

Is this what happens when you stop moving? You become a part of the environment rather than being a guest, as Gaia claims what she is owed by your trespass.

So, what is beyond the accursed border of this here anathematic bocage?

People previous to you have told great stories of what lay beyond your sight.

You’ve seen short videos of other folks, sometimes it seems as though they see more than you. Everyone knows more than you, a joke that you don't get. Or are you the joke?

You are so small, dwarfed by the trunk on which you rest.

So small...

Why find the end?

Is it the Eden you've been promised? Or the land of Zion? Valhalla? Avalon?

Or more woods.

Is it worth traversing the rest of the woods to find out?

Or should you slumber beneath the giant beech?

Because you cannot see forwards, and you're losing memory of what lay behind you.

Will you wither against the forest as you seek in vain for the sweet end?

Will you grow roots, and watch many more like you face these very questions?

Will the sun finally rise? Because you've been left without light for too long.