Heady sweet florals mixed with pine scents like adrenaline hit my nostrils as I enter the darkened mouth of the thickened tree line that borders the marsh and welcomes me into an enshrouded hum of insect and animal noises like a primal forest – stops dead the incessant Carolina sun. I bounce lightly along the needle laden trail kicking up and releasing particles of living earth in my wake. I open my mouth reptile-like as if I could take in the details through all five, six, infinite senses. Swivel my head back and forth as the light recedes on the trail behind me and I am engulfed in sensory reactions. Days ago I was tearing at my skin – like a dragon of old – long ebony talons sunk deep into iridescent auburn scales tearing and shedding the weight of the world from my existence.

But if this is a stage of chrysalis I’ve been here before. I’ve known these colors of change like a familiar dream, as waves of doubt and anticipation roll off of me like an aura exposed I stop tearing and let my worry fall away. Nothing is ever really new – only reincarnations of the selves we’ve let hibernate until we’ve grown a little wiser, taken deeper breaths and come upon them again. It’s all coming back to me now. You cannot force change, she’ll blindside you every time; but you can embrace each dawn and dusk as if there were none to follow.

Turn and turn and turn again. My face gathers lines with each revelation of mundane or divine importance and they on my furrowed brow draw new stories to bolster the continuity of the hour hand. The minute hand is a lie, forcing a fleeting acknowledgement of our own helplessness against time. The hour hand is markedly calm, awaiting the culminations of our small acts of deliberation and defiance and drawing us ever forward.

Slow down, I reverberate a mandate across neurons. Today is the day, nigh is the hour, and tomorrow, sure as the North Star, the sun will rise again. Today will be today tomorrow, and ever after, until we have seen ourselves through the undulating madness and inevitability of the truth.