Emerald Green

“Then on the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink” — Keats

Do you remember telling me about dreaming of the cotton fields?

As I sat on the beach, worrying that you might not want to swim back, I remembered.

I thought of the bolls gently rocking to the warm wind, and of the stories of those dreams, not one of them about cotton except one, stories that didn’t need to be written, because they already were, and of the cotton fields, always the fields, that kept the secret of all the epilogues to all the stories.

Except one.

It was a story of waiting on the beach and thinking of cotton fields; I couldn’t wait to tell you, but it didn’t look like you were swimming back.

At least not just yet.