I curve my fingers into the splitting trunk. Its graying bark no longer reveals a fleshy underbelly. Scars trace mirthlessly across its aging skin; the twisting, blemished exterior has grown tough. Bark winds up the trunk, wrapping the black walnut in a tight embrace.

          My feet carried me here, no destination in mind. I didn’t want to be trapped between four walls anymore, trapped by my own walled thoughts. So I followed as the pavement turned to gravel. Or maybe it was that driving pulse, ticking in a steady beat against my skull. Tick tock, tick tock. That clock, that sinking in my stomach, it always catches up to me, no matter how fast I run. But out here, under the walnut tree, maybe the second hand will freeze. Give me some time to breathe.

          Broken shards of wooden skin come off at my touch, cascading from my fingers, exposing yet another layer of impassive shell.

          What have you seen? What have you heard? Was it those harsh winters, telling you that your skin wasn’t thick enough? Did they tell you to yank up layer after layer of bark until you could barely feel the sun’s gentle warmth?

          Protect the heartwood, walnut. 

          Or was it that lightning bolt, the one that split you right in two? I can feel your bumpy scars beneath my fingers, calloused over with rings of numbed and hardened pain. Will I have to take a hatchet to carve out your heart?

          If only I could understand your voice; I’ve heard that you speak through your roots. But my human feet can’t feel the electric currents radiating from under the soil. I turn my ears toward every hiss of a shifting leaf, every crackle of bark, but I still can’t speak your language. Can you help me understand you? Your voice is slow, gentle, and purposeful, pianissimo but adagio. 

          You’re speaking through scent, an invisible cloud of pain. On a normal day, I’d walk right past you, your mundane shape just a shadow in the background of life’s painting. But not today. Somehow, I’ve noticed that you’re trying to speak, silently screaming out into the windblown sky.

          I take a leaf between my fingers, gently pinching the thin fibers. The pumping veins hide beneath the tender tissue, a skeleton of captured sunlight. My eyes only see the green, the light you can’t use to make energy, the wasted color. The universe must be laughing at me, at humankind. To us, green is life, but to you, it’s really only wasted light.

          I feel, right under my fingertips, that your calloused skin hides watery blood. I press my ear to your trunk. It gives you away, that steady ba bum ba bum, even though you push it deep down, tightly and completely.

          I sit back on my heels, gazing up at the sprawling canopy of branches. Something is twisting inside me, a relentless, clawing creature. Tick tock, tick tock. I swipe to clear away that inner drumbeat. 

          Stop, I’m here now.

          So, I flip myself upside down, silently begging the creature to let go and slip away. With my back on the ground and my heels against the tree, gravity dips and twists and falls until I can’t decide which way is up anymore. I could walk right along the trunk and off into the branches, running out into the sky. The ground-wall supports the weight of my shoulders, aligning carefully with my spine before gently nudging me off into the clouds.

          I rest my head against the grass with a ‘thud’. I’m spinning...revolving...turning at unfathomable speeds…but I’m just lying still beneath this tree. This thought crosses my mind briefly, and I grasp at it, reaching outward to understand. From this new angle, with my toes above my knees, my blood is thrown off its usual pulsation. From the back of my head, along my spine, and into my inverted legs, something is pulling me, spinning me at a different pace than the rest of the world around me. My feet, so used to their firm placement on the ground, are telling my head that it cannot possibly be in the right place. Judging by the pulsing beat in my toes, my brain has decided to flip into my feet, compensating for this strange reversal of gravity. There. Now I must be right side up. Brains are such funny things, so easily manipulated by their owners, I consider, oddly aware of my own consciousness, as the spindly green branches twist their way across the blue canvas above my head.

          With a jolt, I think I might fall, fall off into the blue, off into the abyss of my mind. Those flimsy leaves won’t catch me. I’m balancing on the edge of a cliff, and a thin carpeting of glucose, carbon dioxide, and water, is the only barrier between me and the boundless sky. The creature roars as I unwittingly give it the power to breathe again. 

          tick tock Tick TOCK. Something’s coming; I can feel it roaring in the distance.

          Like the electric currents pulsing through my brain, the branches are bending, bowing as solid sound batters through their tendrils. I inhale sharply and quickly flip my legs back around. I pivot my body so I’m parallel with gravity, scoot back against the tree, and brace myself for whatever’s coming. Pressing my hands firmly into the smushed grass and tucking my knees tightly to my chest, I reassure myself that I can’t slip away into the clouds.

          The wind gasps. And with a sigh, it comes roaring into my consciousness. Tick tock, tick tock, but softer now. The wind’s ebbing and flowing waves are all consuming. Pushing against my ear, it throbs in an ebbing drumbeat. The wind has no voice, so it relies on everything it touches to tell its story. And now, I’m at the wind’s mercy, buffeted through flipping pages of its narrative. My own eardrum pulsates as the waves of air whisper over my head and around my body. Even my shirt, still pressed against the jabbing trunk of the walnut, rustles at its touch. My roof of delicate leaves bends and quivers as the wind rips effortlessly through its rafters. They shake and hiss but don’t resist. Rippling grasses echo the wind’s playful dance, twisting their stalks in time with its song.

          I rest my head back against the tree’s raw and jagged spine and close my eyes. The wind music surrounds me, as if I’m submerged in a pulsating, ebbing pool. Water churns and collapses and swirls through my lungs. Oh right, it’s not water. I don’t have to hold my breath out here. 

          I open my eyes, and they’re drawn up. The impossible blanket of powder blue stretches into everything. My vision blurs as I reach the horizon, my brain restricted by my transient body. Through the canopy of branches and green, I can taste the blue and smell the sunlight. The air breathes itself into my lungs, filling me with sharp, dusted warmth. 

          Dainty beetles, hollow shells, vibrant butterflies, and swaying grasses swirl around me in their fleetingly delicate mortal dance. Only now, in this moment, can I gaze across the prairie and see those same beetles, same grasses, before time casts them into the past. 

          Look, now they’re gone.

          Tick tock. Something wells up inside of me, a deep and profound humming consumes me from the inside out. It’s navy darkness, just before dawn, pulling me down by my ankle. I’m sinking, falling, drowning, and…. 

          A moth is hovering silently in front of me, its delicate wings battling against the torrential waves of wind. A split second, and it's gone, off into the grass. I blink back into the moment, right now. I’m still here, right? I dig my fingers into the soft mud at the base of the trunk. I lift my hands, and they’re covered in dark paint. This is life. I’m alive, right now.

          I sit beneath the walnut tree, pressed against its sharp, twisting bark. A gentle beat thumps beneath my skin. Its digging into the small of my back, that gnarled darkness. I never intended to end up out here, under the walnut’s draping canopy. Funny, sometimes your feet take you where you need to be, when you least expect it.

          Vmmmm vmmmm, my watch hums against my wrist. Times up. The creature returns to the deep, raking my throat as it submerges beneath waves of notifications and color-coded calendar events. I stand and swing my backpack over my shoulders, letting its weight return me to the civilized world. Now, follow your feet. I swallow, pushing the creature’s sharp claws down deeper, and it hisses in disdain, snarling for attention. 

          The gravel turns to pavement, and my thoughts turn from breaths of wind into carefully calculated lines. Ba bum ba bum, goes the heartbeat beneath my feet. I stop and turn back to the walnut. 

          There’s a maze of twisting, blackened roots winding under my rubber soles, pulsing out an electric heartbeat to all those who’ll listen. It bleeds seamlessly with my own. 

          Tick tock ba bum.