Embedded

Fiction

Nicole Pottgen

There is something beyond the trees that tower over this balcony; it feels as though each day they become taller, more present, more aware of my noticing. Something beyond the panels of darkness between each trunk, the tunnels of nothingness that extend to somewhere I have yet to comprehend—they don’t even sway, they just exude the wet wooden scent that I inhale one eager breath at a time. A forest breathes into me, igniting my senses but begging my mind for an answer—what is beyond the dark lanes of silence? The lanes of seeming ambiguity, the lanes of my creation? Who lurks in the unseen center of the woods with my still-beating heart displayed in glass, atop their clumsy fingers, awaiting ritual?   

It is true that sometimes a fantasy will tumble, rather unexpectedly, into reality’s elusive sphere. The fantasy will then collide, constructing a world between fabrication and fact, a sort of zone of delusion. Bleeding into the intermittent experience where the fantasy does play out somewhat adjacent to its origin, this zone starts to seem more real than fantastical, and this zone suddenly infiltrates everything. Everything now glistens with haunting, teasing possibilities, enveloped in desire, disguised as a certainty, an endless spawn of premature visions. 

Everything becomes associated with the visions. I must stake myself firmly into what is real, what is beaming with tangibility. Like the pine branches that canopy me, I can see each individual pine needle and the sun illuminating them, seeping through each empty crevice like water between fingers—enveloping, arranging, igniting. The cicadas produce one synchronous voice, a wall of sound, a wall of heat, a piercing ring that builds, tapers, and then completely disappears. These things are real. They are so real I can feel them in my breath; these sights and sounds are primal, they have been happening long before my acknowledging.  

I consider then, the prospect of seeing the hidden departure of a cicada from a branch: of seeing it mid-flight, crossing over from the pines to the oaks, effervescent against the blue, a slow-motion, eye-catching moment, wings translucent, shimmering in the balmy sun, flying elsewhere, a vibrating, bronze ball in the sky. I see the cicada in awe, in triumph, in complete satisfaction. I see the cicada the same way I see the figure in the woods from the balcony—perpetually coming closer, but never actually tangible; nothing other than a silhouette that stands over me, in awe, in triumph, in complete satisfaction. 

Emerging now from the woods is an answer; I can either follow it to freedom or burn it with my mind. If I burn it, I can modify it, craft it, kill it, create it. The trees aren’t quiet anymore, with the wind filtering through branches and rearranging coiled leaves, and then a cracking, the sound of a fingernail tracing patterns in the bark, a full, present sound that makes the answer even clearer. The trees are making room, they are still breathing, extending, becoming more visible. I light a match, and I throw it. The answer is now gone.