Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in the Forgotten. The Forgotten was a place where the overgrown, having superseded the thoughts that lent them relevance, lived out their existence. Just because a thing no longer has an identity, doesn’t mean that it loses mass or matter. The overgrown were made up of many different types of creatures. The coils and bits from some overlooked machination, collected in so many separate cupboards and nooks. The surname of a schoolyard sweetheart, faded beyond memory, beyond the dulled paper and ballpoint pen that used to sing its cursive letters. Multicolored pebbles, once adorned with longitude and latitude, disassembled from their destinations and gathered en masse, specifics now nebulous. Still there, somewhere. All these things, and she.
She used to think that it was possible to step into the spaces in between certain trees and be transported, somewhere else. She jumped in and out of fairy circles, over and onto tree stumps, squeezed between vine and bramble, trying to reach beyond the veil. Sometimes she thought she could see the shimmer, the scrim between worlds, but the moment she looked straight at it, the irrisdescent shadow would break, and it would just be she. Always alone, staring blankly, over the topography of echoes.
The world around her is ephemeral, created of ennui and jamais vu. Hung thick with vertigo, splattered with the lost and found. She is displaced within her home, forever slipping betwixt transverse angles. She is like expelled vapor, like fallen spiders nests, there but unseen. And if one day you and she should lock eyes, then you are Forgotten too. You and she. Overgrown, ever after.
