Rilla

I blinked and looked out the window again. My favorite gorilla stuffed toy was lying on the ground, two stories below. I was back in boarding school. Sixteen years old. I'd walked into my little nook in the shared dormitory to find Lucy throwing my prized possession out the window.

Why me? I asked myself as I ran downstairs to retrieve Rilla from the lawn. What's wrong with me?

As I knelt down on the grass, the soft voice of a Sufi poet whispered in my ear. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

I lay down in that grass and stared up at the sky.