It's a Practice

(Written Aug. 5, 2025)

At Cunningham Falls park between north beach and south beach there is a bridge. Under that bridge is a stream that comes down from the mountains. The stream runs into a lake. 

The stream has a very faint undertone of the smell of salt. And there is evaporated salt on the rocks where the level of the water has fallen.

I hear running water, insects trilling. There’s a slight chill in the air, the promise of fall to come. I’m sitting on a rock at the edge of the stream and it is in full shade, surrounded by water but grounded at the same time

I am surrounded by trees. I’m new to the area so I don’t know their names yet. Since it is high summer they are full of green leaves. It’s morning. Late enough that the sun is fully up. Not early enough that it could be considered early in my book since I wake before sunrise.

The tops of the trees have sunlight making the leaves a lighter green than the leaves near me that are in shade with occasional dapples of light. 

I hear birds calling, but don’t know their names either. 

The place is foreign to me and yet seems like home at the same time. I could pitch a tent by this stream and live here alone in the wilderness and I think I could be completely at peace.

Human beings confuse me. I don’t understand them at all. Even humans that are mostly like me. Sometimes I look around and I feel like I’m all alone on this planet. The only one.

My mind is constantly trying to make sense of them. Their motivations. Why they look and act the way they do.

I’ve tried all my life to figure them out, chameleon so that they don’t see how different I am from them.

I don’t trust them. I don’t feel safe around them. When I do find one that makes me feel safe I let the mask slip. Sometimes I am safe. But sometimes they growl at me and make scary faces and the mask has to come back on quickly.

If I actually get into a deep emotional space with growling humans bad things happen inside my head. And I have to retreat.

Sometimes humans sting me.

Sometimes they use me. Many times they use me.

I’ve been trying to survive on this planet for only the goddesses know how long. I don’t belong here.

I’m stranded though. I feel stranded. There is no going home. Home is not available to me anymore.

Where is that? The land of the fairies? I wish I knew. That’s what I’ve been told but I just don’t know.

It certainly isn’t here though. 

But this stream. These woods. These rocks and trees. They feel like the closest I might get.

The sounds of the insects are rising and falling with the screams of the children by the lake.

Those screams don’t feel human. They sound monstrous. That’s not what joy sounds like to me.

Joy sounds like music, beautiful harmonies weaving together and away from each other. Even dissonance in music can be so beautiful it makes me cry.

I stained the attic stairs yesterday and the color was so beautiful when I was done I looked up and wept. Such gorgeous wood. Stained deep brown.

I have been looking for more fairies and not finding them.

I feel so alone. Being around humans makes me feel so other, so odd and so fucking exhausted.

I think I need to make more space to not be human. To revert to my fairy self if that’s what it is. 

Is that why my dragonfly kind of scares me?

Roots and earth. Water and rocks. Air and insects. Where is the fire? It feels like the fire is inside me.

Is that because I need to burn up and phoenix myself? Maybe? But if I do that, what do I become on the other side? When you brush the ash aside, what will grow from that?

I’m afraid of that, I think.

The not knowing. I’ve been a chameleon for so long. I was a fairy. Now I’m a chameleon. And I need to rise like a phoenix and become what? 

This life has been so traumatic and so confusing. I’m afraid of what’s next.

Chaos. There’s just so much chaos.

This creek, these woods, these rocks, these insects. These make sense to me. 

They don’t need a damn thing from me. All they want is to be left alone. Me too, rocks, me too.