Nectar

art by Stephen Ground

by Catherine Buck

We met at the place where water plunged over ground, where everyone met in song and story and so it seemed a fitting place for a rendezvous of our own.

You found me seated on the boulder. When the rains came hardest they’d coat the surface slick, so I always checked the skies to confirm I was in no danger. That day, the rock was dry and the sun directly overhead. My feet waited flat on the stone and I could feel the beginnings of a burn.

We dove into the river together and tried to find our way through.

—

The world beneath the ground was hollow and damp. The moisture the plants rejected dripped down through the ceiling and landed square on our heads. Our sweaters absorbed the weight and swell of the liquid, then smelled like unwashed sheep.

I ran through tunnels carved by the ancients and pressed my hands along the walls, always a little ashamed when they gave under the pressure, messing into my palms and blurring half my sight. These were temporary walls to carry the weight of the world ongoing.

At the lake beneath the tunnels I took off my shorts and slid in, fought gravity to reach the bottom. Soon my arms throbbed and I was pulled upwards, my lungs refusing to self-destruct. Please be patient, I said. Let me down just this once. My drill sergeant brain refused and I burst through to the surface.

I’d always commanded an unruly army. My ears once reported that great leaders did not seek out power. I wanted power. I wanted to control my limbs, my pulse, and my sneeze. I tried them on every tribunal and had my lips held for contempt of court. So little of it stuck. They have forgiven me but stripped me of all my airs.

—

We perched on each fingertip of the trees, their long arms reaching out from the bedding soil after a night of exceptionally restful sleep. I painted the leaves red-gold and yellow, a polish in preparation for the whirl to come. They shook to wave at each passerby. We are here, I called out to small animals who stopped to urinate on each knotted root and stem. We have been waiting and are so glad you are here.

—

My lungs and my heart allied themselves when we reached the mountains. They put in overtime hours and propelled me ever upward. My eyes decided they too would try for an award of most improved and allowed me to notice the smallest details that made my breath sing to my bones, and all of us shook in unabashed pleasure and joy. We looked out and saw the krill twirl and the pebbles bounce and the inchworms mate and the first snowflake that would one day engender an avalanche. We saw infinite tragedies and infinite love and tried to balance the meaning of both.

—

We were born with eyes in our hands, and our knees, and our hips. They stared into the darkness of clothing backs, laid shut when there was nothing good to see and were blinded when made to kneel or embraced around the waist.

I never could punch without a black eye in my palm, the miniature arteries pulsing in protest. I raised my arm high so the wound would flow back to the source and my toes cried out in loneliness. I recruited their best intentions and stretched up one extra inch, all of me flimsy: a sight that no one could miss.

—

The trees tired of their leaves and washed them off with the softest rain and told onlookers they were just as beautiful bare. Their spindly limbs embraced the sky and the birds sang to the branches that they loved them all the same. The herons raised clippings to build their homes and after a natural disaster asked if the maples would donate just a bit of sap to help those who had lost all of theirs. The trees consented. This inspired the bees to turn over their treasure too, and for a few moments everyone felt considerably sweeter about the state of affairs.

And what a state it was: all of us alone.

We tried– and perhaps with a lifetime we could have come close. We could have whispered for years of our fears and our dreams and our pains, we could have pressed our skin to a nothing apart, made every right choice and every right step.

We could have done all of this, and still we would be suffocated by bamboo shoots and nautilus shells, by oaken trunks and dragon scales. The island could rise from the center of the lake and we could grip the ground with the teeth in our feet and still fall bruised holding nothing.

Still we will be our minds and our lungs alone with our limbs and our blood, while kidneys churn and bladders spill, joints creak and tear ducts clog.

The river will push us through the sky and we’ll exit at separate ends of the same story. We’ll land still apart.

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