Who Am I?

Once upon a time there was a lake in the middle of a valley high in the mountains that had never been seen by any human being at all. The lake was clear and blue—so clear someone could, though no human ever had, see clear through to the lake bottom, see the golden fishes and tadpoles and reeds, and the surface of the water was so blue that someone could, though no human ever had, see reflected on the water the high mountains with snow on their peaks and hawks soaring high overhead, their piercing cries heard only by their own kin and other forest dwellers.

No human has ever, ever seen this crystal clear lake and yet it has existed always and forever. It needs no witnessing. It needs no poems or stories to be made real. It exists. It knows itself as existing. It gives berth to these golden fishes who swim among the reeds in search of whatever creatures they eat.

There is sometimes a song that can be heard high in the pine trees on the lake’s edge. If there were a human there to hear it, though there's never been, she might at first mistake it for the wind. She'd crane her neck to turn her head toward the sound. She’d then think maybe it was birdsong, but that wasn't quite right either. The song keeps drifting in and out of hearing—if she closed her eyes, she could hear it better. When she closes her eyes, she feels the song on her skin. Her skin suddenly aches and tingles and she feels tears well up, and a feeling in her belly like the world has just dropped out beneath her, but her bare hands and feet feel the sun-drenched stone she is sitting on, on the lake's edge, and she knows the world hasn't dropped out from under her. Listening to the hawk’s cries brings her back and she hears the song again and it makes her heart feel like it's about to break.

 Drink from the lake.

They aren't human words she hears—the song, the sighing of the wind, the birdsong, the hawk’s cries, her skin alive and her breaking heart tell her in bone language—

Drink from the lake.

She opens her eyes and sees the lake, but it's far below her on this rock she's perched on. She doesn't know how to reach the water. She could climb down the jagged edge of the rock, cutting and scratching herself and possibly falling on the way, or, she could leap, straight out in to the air and sail down, dive down into the lake, letting it drink her.

Either thought fills her with fear.

She doesn't know what she'll do.

She sits and listens.