Short Story by Anna Rozwadowska
In the insidious system of giving, Sylvia wondered whether altruism had any meaning at all anymore. Slanted by her desire for words, she repented her dyslexia and the tell-all-syndrome. It came, the day when she finally received her honor; the damnation of all that is unholy, the fruit that lay hidden low, as to touch the underbrush of the earth. She lay on the cornerstone of evil and the jetted moon; something as good and bad yet far more sinister. It was the culmination of finding her shadow self-Jungian style. Sigmund Freud would be rolling over in his grave, she thought.
Next morning, as flexibility flooded her body during her morning yoga routine, she began to notice her earthly flesh in a way that hadn’t presented itself before. Pain, perhaps? Hunger with the zest of delirium?
It was as if her knees felt a pulsation, and electricity flew through her like in the Tesla coil. Sylvia was imbued with whitewash from her childhood, especially in the retardation of her emotions. Her heart had stopped beating, metaphorically, since the day that her father died. He passed away, knowing that she would never attempt a life that was different from his way of living. That’s all that she knew, his way of living. Straight and narrow, cut dry, down to the bone, with no room for emotion.
She often felt like an automaton.
Inside her personal forest, reflected by the silver moon and the dangling sun, numerous conifers were situated alongside her imagination, but oddly enough, it had no space in her space. Then, she felt her knees. Something odd had happened, a scratch perhaps, something crawling. Her flesh had spoken for the first time since…. you know. Her speech as well was altered and varied, as if her vocal coach had infused her tongue with unsure communication.
It was dark that day.
She decided to sit down on the floor, both legs draped over and listened to what her body was saying.
Sylvia had one wild imagination.
Being stuck in her mind all the time, she rarely felt the tingle of her fingertips. The underworld of her taste buds; it was just food, after all. She listened closely; the floor had a voice of its own, squeaky now. It was sparkling clean, as her mother was a germaphobe. Sylvia sipped the tea of salvia; something that her father taught her helped to reveal her subconscious. Now, it was her earthly body that warranted attention. And it spoke, yearning for the day when the unconscious self would appear inside the allocated body, framing her grid as a quasi-reality, a sort of temporary temple in which she prayed, fasted, ate, bathed, and learned.
It was her home.
It was present all along.
During her exploration, time twisted as the juice of lime, in spaces she stood, one with the clouds and soaring eagles. In space, she understood. Her cage had remained open, but she flew not all along. Rather, she dove head-first into the breezy waters of the ocean, muddled as it was far from the shore where grey whales beached. Her canoe was made of ventricles of her heart, and she felt as if she was going to escape the dangers of a secluded forest. A protected area. Secrecy shrouded her all along, yet all she wanted was the truth, her heart now pounding as she reached the deep waters. Was she doing the unthinkable: facing her impending expansion in a divided world?
Or would she remain frozen in time, captured and fed by lone wolves at the edge of 1982?
Anna Rozwadowska, Ph.D., is an environmental management social ecologist, psychic, writer and editor. She dabbles in photography and metaphysics. She loves to pour her heart out through he4rn work. She has overn20n years of experience in working with multiple sectors.
