40
supposes, like the grounding sensation beneath his back now, the pillowing effect that comes with laying in grasses as tall as a child. He likes the descriptor, he decides, finding the way it rolls off his tongue a comfort. Or perhaps he is merely comforted by the fact that there is no one around to hear it. He takes a breath, feels the way it cracks in his throat. He got lost here once. Not this exact place but in a world so vast it is inevitable that pockets exist that are so like this in texture, in comfort. He had run through and felt the sun on his skin as he does now. Basked in it and let it seep through the layers until he felt a little less like dying. He had been too busy to notice it as a child. Had been too busy running away from his dad to pick out the details of the space he’d run into. When he’d heard his father’s voice, he’d dropped into the wheat of the field and held his breath. But the man had not followed him. And by the time he’d truly processed how very suddenly alone he was, he had fallen asleep to the reassuring constant of a whistling chill. There were days when he ran off to cry out things he didn’t want others worrying about until he’d washed out the raw wound he sulked in. Days when he fought the urge and lost, when he sank amongst the flowers and the wheat and the snow and stared into all that blue. He’s perhaps never left it, or perhaps it never leaves him. He closes his eyes but it’s there again. Blue without end from one coast to another. He feels smothered without it, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal all too claustrophobic for him to stand them too long. Which is why he drives and gets lost and ends up here. Somewhere primordial. He says that word aloud too, primordial. Feels the way it forms on his lips and marvels at the nuances in intonation that are often lost in situations where absolute silence is not a possibility. Marvels at the sharpness of any word spoken in a vacuum of sounds like this. In the absence of sound, the slightly unsettling reminder of his heartbeat in his ears returns, a slow whoosh that he conveniently forgets amongst the city noise, but which he is forced to focus upon now. He takes a breath through his nose and its as shaky as it is grounding; the cold numbs out whatever had started to build in his chest. When he breathes again, deeper this time, he lets that sound drown out the rush of his own blood in his ears. He lets it cover up whatever chunks of his childhood still cling to him until it’s just him. Him, this wildflower field, and the numbness in his lungs.