October 28, 2023 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “The water will still be there”

You’ll drive in circles sometimes, missing your turn over and over again until something in you gets it right and once you’re on the road for a while you’ll go through lots of green and the trees will get taller and they will stand tighter together until all you can see is leaves blending into branches and overgrown grass reaching up between roots, and sometimes the road leads to the beach, sometimes to the lake, and either way there is an unbelievable blue blinking at you from behind the bark and so many small, strange things happen here you think they must really be happening here, like wearing his ring on a walk and watching the stone fall off somewhere in the woods and searching for so long, knees bent on the forest floor, bringing dirt up with them as you stand, telling the others to keep going, saying you’ll catch up later, saying the water will still be there when you’re done, and then you are back on your knees, burying your hands in the earth, believing it.