I went to the bookstore with its stacks of books waiting for fingers to open the covers and hearts to bury into each word. The man there, with his wobbly chin, and his hair that makes me think of hermits, looked through me.
He knew the heart I hide inside and he saw the fear stacked against my spine, and he asked, with his eyes, both cloudy and piercing, the eyes of a man who can see the soul, “why are you so afraid?”
He asked this first as I tried not to bolt, away from those eyes, away from the words he was speaking. The words that were revealing the heart within this body. A heart that swells and breaks and soars at the littlest things. A heart that is coated in fear.
He asked again as I shifted from foot to foot, afraid of imposing, afraid of pushing my presence on this man, on his space. He laughed at me, not cruelly, simply in entertainment. He said I have a soul that soars, that laughs and jumps and flies without a care in the world. Or at least it pretends to. Then his head tipped to the side and his laughter died away and his voice, light before, became heavy. Before he turned away, he asked once more “why are you so afraid?”
I could not answer him then.
And I cannot answer him now.
Autumn Unleashed 