By Audrey Lambert, TIWP Student

Vines grew through the cracks in her skin. They climbed in every direction, wrapping around her ankles and pulling her down into the earth. Her toes were rooted down into soil and her fingers were tangled into spiderwebs. Lady bugs flew out of her ears and caterpillars squirmed from her nose. Butterflies escaped through her bellybutton and dragonflies stowed their treasure in the chasm of her mouth. Moths spun their silk through her hair and dandelions grew from her eyelashes. Tadpoles swam in the pools of her eyes and vampire bats draped from her neck. Grapes grew from her hips and apples from her throat. Strawberries painted her cheeks bright red and the scent of lemons always followed behind her. She held nature in her hands and in return it supported her from the ground up.

But slowly, the Earth became lonely. Her leaves began to dry, so nature gave her the greatest gift of all, her love, the Ocean. The Ocean who rehydrated her vines and rejuvenated her heart that had felt so alone. He eroded away her hard exterior into fine sand, the beach became the area in which they coexisted, one always touching the other. He gave her fish to protect and she gave him the seal, an animal which should live on land, but prefers the sea. He planted reef after reef of coral just to make her smile and she sent him penguins, birds who didn’t quite make sense but she knew their silly waddling would make the Ocean laugh. They sent breezes back and forth, declaring whispers of ‘I love you’ to one another, they spun storms as expressions of their simultaneous turmoil of separation, for when she was everywhere, he was nowhere and when he was everywhere she was nowhere. 

Nature itself, however, was afraid to let them collide head on. The closest they had gotten to contact was while the Earth sobbed, quaking from her core, the Ocean used all his strength to rush towards her in a wall of water. A tsunami, they had called it. Chaos, chaos was what occurred when they were together, but turmoil, turmoil, is what occurred when they were apart. But they were okay, okay with just the sand in between, the sand touching water, the sand touching land, because they were close enough, close enough to hear the other say, ‘I love you, too.’