No moon tonight
I light a candle
and listen to the
dark
~ Alexis Rotella, in Akitsu Quarterly, Fall, 2014
Gabriella did not move. She was enchanted. She closed her eyes a moment and felt the coolness of her eyelids and saw the green shadows dancing beneath them. She pursed her lips to taste the moisture of the mountain forest and knew for sure that she was not dreaming. When she opened her eyes, she saw the deer eating the coiled peel of the clementine. It was a moment she would long remember. She would remember it as the mysterious beginning of healing, the untranslatable language of God speaking in nature and stopping the world in a green moment.