The first time I died was in the spring. Just that morning, I’d seen the first blossom of the season on my own cherry tree, having waited out the last frost by only moments. Life was blooming along the floors and windows of the forest, and I was ready for another life. With a single glance over my shoulder at the hollow, the grove, the home that had been so familiar, I set off on the short path to the river.
When I leapt into the currents to follow you, the savage crystalline stream carried me farther from the sandy shores in seconds than I’d traveled in all my life. The ideas you brought entranced me, and there was no thing too sacred to trade for the chance to stay near you. Without hesitation, I traded my soul for a chance to know you, terrified that my chance to free my mind would disappear with you. I didn’t know that in the transfer, that ill-defined spirit was to become not a ghost but a rock too heavy for you to hold, and why would you try? It was sinking you, it was sinking us; you had bargained for my soul, and when I handed the heavy thing over, the waters overtook us both.
As the currents pulled me this way and that, I realized I had no mechanism for navigation. The distance between us widened, and for a brief string of moments I battled the water to close it. But the truth had now surfaced, even as I began to sink; you weren’t taking me with you. I don’t blame you for breaking free, for saving yourself. You were right. My death freed me in all the ways you couldn’t, and I wait here still, dead in this river of ideas, waiting to be resurrected.
