Dear Sexy Math Teacher...

Dear Sexy Math Teacher,

     I am sorry I strung you along for months, played with your emotions, and then moved three thousand miles away without saying goodbye.  I am a coward.  I had feelings for you which I am pretty sure crossed the line of what is appropriate, and I was afraid I might do something that I would end up regretting.  I would never want to do anything to jeopardize our friendship, or more importantly, your job.  I hope you will forgive me and that we can one day be friends again.

Sincerely,
Calluna

Water

My ramshackle cabin shook to its foundations.  I had to get out of there.  I made a beeline for the clover field across the road and sat down to see if I could find what I sought.  A self-heal was flowering, a tiny single bloom reminiscent of a pale pink fish in suspended animation.  I felt the square stem between thumb and forefinger and thought how this determined its familial origins: Mint.  I looked closer.  A blade of grass bent under the weight of a single drop of rain.  I lied down, knowing this drop might hold a key.  Through it, I could see the field, the farmhouse, the gas station down the road, sky, mountains, and freeway:  a smaller version of the larger world.  I wondered if someone inside this world within the rain drop was looking through a smaller rain drop at an even smaller world, and so on and on.  I decided yes, they were.  It was infinite.  I walked down the road to the ditch that drained the clover field.  A white ash grew at an angle out of the bank.  I pressed my body against its wetness and noticed a Virginia creeper tendrilling its way up the trunk.  Parthenocissus quinquefolia.  I whispered the name over and over.  It was sensuous, but more than that: visceral, spiritual.  I could feel the tree breathing.  Its pulse reverberated through my body, in sync with my own.  I dug my fingers in, water pouring out of it down my arms.  My lips and nose gently caressed the rough bark.

            Suddenly, I became acutely aware of something nearby on the ground.  I slowly knelt down next to it, examining it with every sense.  It was a fallen branch, covered in patches of green lichen, each one different.  Obligate symbiosis, I thought.  Soul mates.  I crawled on hands and knees over the length of the branch, through the leaf litter.  A few blades of grass and leaves reached valiantly toward the sky, leading my way down through the dead, decomposing matter.  I delicately moved the detritus away from the stem of a self-heal, all the way to the base.  There!  There he was: a tiny, miniscule, glowing creature.  I stared at him, unblinking, inching my face ever closer, but not too close.  I wanted to be with him.  My hands dug deeper into the litter, and in a flash, it happened.  My fingers extended deep into the core of the Earth.  The dead leaves, soil, even the bedrock climbed up my arms and I was in the rain drop.  I saw everything, from the very beginning of time.  The Big Bang.  Evolution.  Birth.  War.  Famine.  Disease.  Death.  Atrocities.  Fire.  Hurricanes.  Volcanic eruptions.  Floods.  Extinction.  Destruction.  Mountaintop removal.  Pollution.  Deforestation.  Acid mine drainage.  Blood.  So much blood.  It erupted from the scars on my wrists and flowed over my whole body; it burned my eyes, and choked me.  Rape.  Violence.  Betrayal.  Dad.  Monster.  Whore.  The blood became acid mine drainage, and continued flowing.  In an instant, I felt the pain of the Earth mingling with my pain, followed by her strength.  A wave of cold, clean water flowed over my body.  I was cold, wet, yet calm, and I heard the little glowing creature’s voice in my head, “You cannot destroy her, just as you cannot destroy yourself.  The water will heal you.”  Then it was over.  I was alone.  My hands were my hands, appendages attached to the ends of my arms, not conduits into another world.  “I am acid mine drainage,” I said.  “And the water will wash it all away.”  I stood up and looked around.  Everything had changed.  I lied down in a rose bush and thought of my Grandma Addie.  I laughed until I cried, and went home knowing I was going to be okay.  I had not even torn my stockings.