Green Grass

I breathe deeply, stepping across the invisible barrier, finding that the grass really is greener over here.

Literally.

But the relativity of the thought strikes me immediately and I brush it away like cobwebs in the trees. No good to lose track of time and space in idleness and dazzled observations. The leaves, pressed and packed into the dirt by passing time, are usually crisp underfoot, but the damp has softened them. I walk sightlessly, eyes open but not seeing past the drizzle and mist that clouds the spaces between bony-fingered tree limbs.

What is the use in even the greenest of grass, anyhow, if we don't even have the freedom of mind or body to experience it fully? Why the opportunity for it to exist if it is an existence unacknowledged by all? The contrast to concrete streets is stark and harsh and the grass grows tall just past the sidewalk.

I tread lightly towards the spot we always are, where our crowns are finally visible and we can straighten our backs even under the weight of the light-laden sky. Pale orange sunrise is bleeding through the trees, igniting the bare and dry branches with piercing rays, and I shield my eyes from the sharpness of it.

Parting the brambles and the snagging thorns, I hurry through the underbrush and narrow, high-reaching tree trunks. My going feels slow, although my footsteps' dull impacts are hurried and forced. The dense treetops are rapidly thinning and the overgrown, barely-visible path under me begins to broaden, ending abruptly at a large fallen trunk. One of the two figures seated atop it turns at my approach, offering a shy smile and a quiet wave of one hand, and I join them beside her.

Elizabeth leans over to greet me as well, as Rachelle slumps slightly into me. She seems burdened, weighed down by the sheer gravity of the way she thinks. Rachelle was always a dreamer, I think, and this place does not serve them kindly in either the physical or the spiritual sense of it. Remembering our first meeting, I think to how she was carefree, and how we didn't ever have to leave the concrete to have that greener-grass feeling. The echoes of her laughter in my mind can still draw from me a smile and cause grass to come through the sidewalk cracks. But that's all it is now: an echo. Her naïveté and childlike joy is slowly depleting and becoming overcome with a profound sense of defeat, which surrounds her being from the way she carries her body as she walks to how she never used to collapse onto my shoulder.

She is one of those unlucky in their awareness and sensitive abilities, who are increasingly pressed under by this sea of constant ebbing and flowing emotions. Elizabeth, though, is not so much an opposite as a negative. She doesn't contest all that Rachelle is… she simply lacks it, in a heartbreaking sort of way. She has not lost her naïve charm, as I've never known her to have it; she is the walking hopeless, I observe now. Sitting folded into her own self, she gazes glassy-eyed through the scenery in front of her like an empty shell. She is a lost soul, she is a hollowed body, and she has a place neither here nor back there.

I slide off the makeshift bench after gently nudging Rachelle from my right side. She props herself upright, shooting me a questioning glance as I wade through the tall grass until I am a fair distance away. Turning, my eyes return to the two of them seated one beside the other, Rachelle and Elizabeth in stark contrast. I glance down at my shoes; they're soaked straight through by the damp grass, but I can't be bothered right now. The watery sunlight coming through the trees is pale green and beautiful, and I can feel the shadow of a grin creeping across my face-- for the first time in a long time. Looking up once more, I catch Rachelle's eye, but cannot meet Elizabeth's vacant gaze-- I don't think she even sees me.

Suddenly, a thought seizes me, a compulsion to make her see, to make her feel the exhilaration of the very act of breathing. I intake an enormous breath, releasing it in the form of an uncivilized and crazed yell, interspersed with wild gaits of laughter. I draw out the noise, deflating every square inch of air from my lungs, until I'm gasping for it in a heaving chest. I glance up once more from my current seat on the ground, my pant legs slowly dampening from the grass as well. Elizabeth is looking at me in complete and utter confusion and the silence is brimming with the anticipation of some sort of response.

I should have expected the subsequent question: Tommy, why would you do that?

I breathe a sigh, wondering why anybody does anything, and why people need particular reasons to do the things which they choose to do. Cramming hands in ever-empty pockets, I think how I need to get a place of employment, and so do they. These thoughts, grounding me back to reality, feel the smile slip from my mouth, into the usual pensive and brow-furrowed look I seem to be fond of. Leaning back on the tree trunk beside Rachelle, I release a frustrated breath. Rachelle gives my shoulder a comforting squeeze, but I shrug her off and walk back to the path, waving half-heartedly in my wake.

Stepping back onto concrete streets, I'm swallowed into the labyrinth of buildings, the streetlamps like red-herring guides, leading me astray at every turn. It takes more than early-morning sunlight to change minds, I suppose, but it was worth the try.