The star shine is bright, blinding

sparkling blue and red and orange and yellow

so she has to squint.

The contrast of light against the 

total black of the night sky

is nearly unbearable.

 

She stops at a willow tree;

here she is shielded from the harsh starlight.

The tree is old:

older than herself, 

older than her parents, and probably 

older than her grandparents.

 

She listens to the sound of a burbling stream

coursing through the darkness by the willow's roots

and touches the smooth pebbles in the icy water.

 

She thinks about the world

and how big it is

and how small she is

and how a world so big can be seen by a person so small and fit

somehow

inside an even smaller mind.

 

There is music.

The forest is silent but

her place under the willow tree is filled with melody.

It is coming from

the whispering wind and

the stars high above and 

the clouds that drifted across them,

invisible in the night.

She hums along,

softly,

and remembers something she then forgets.

It passed across her conscious mind 

for the briefest of moments

and she knows it is gone forever,

but it leaves an imprint behind:

the footstep of a memory.

 

It is overwhelming,

sometimes,

and it makes her feel melancholy. An unexplicable sadness,

loneliness

or homesickness

or something else entirely.

That's why she is here,

under the willow tree,

singing with the wind and the clouds and

squinting in the star light.

Her own world apart

from the one she was thown into by force, a world where

she can breathe

freely

without fear.

 

Only a special place,

a world

under a willow tree,

with a stream and smooth pebbles

and bright stars

and a wind in the tops of the trees

can make her feel free.