Old Post

I posted this about a year ago, on my old blog. There's at least a coupla' people who check in on this blog that have already read this, so I apologize, but I'm lazy, and in retrospect, this isn't a bad post. I titled it: With No-one as Witness:

I've always had my hidden places. For as long as I can remember. One place was so hidden that I realized as I grew older that it didn't even exist in the first place. It was above the ceiling in the attic, near where a pipe ran up the wall. It was filled with pillows and soft things, just a sea of quiet softness. Only the very young were allowed there. No-one older than me.

As I grew, I found more places. Trees were typical. In the area surrounding my school, near the church, there were several with thick canopies. Certain friends were allowed there. One tree was even named "The Spaceship Crest." It was mostly used for stakeouts and eating junk food. The church itself, which was always open, was always ripe with secret locations, inside and out. One day under a dark staircase, Stacy B. showed her young breasts to a small group of boys, and to my utter horror, me, during some version of truth or dare. I remember feeling bad for her afterwards, because I knew the boys would later judge her, even though it was probably wildly exciting to them at the time. She wasn't pretty, and came from a poor, overweight family. I know she thought this would make them happy, make them like her. This moment. When the soul begins to chip.

I knew I wanted to write about hidden places when I got home today. It centered on one memory, and not any of the above. Those came later in my thinking, though not in my life. There was this place, well hidden, yet ridiculously close to people and activity, that I used to visit in my late teens, in the summertime. I would walk there, or sometimes ride my bike. I know now that it was private property, but I never thought in those terms back then. There was a wooden fence along a winding road, shrouded by a bushy bramble of vines and overgrowth. On the opposite side of the fence was a drop of about five feet, the fence running adjacent to and above a stone wall.

In I would drop, in a skirt and a tank-top, wearing perhaps Converse All-Stars or impractical sandals. More vines and scrubby growth, small fruit trees if my memory serves me. And there, not more than twenty feet from the road, a waterfall. It wasn't large, probably falling, like the wall, about five feet. It spilled down over large flat rocks, the water continuing on down a small stream. Down my satchel, off my shoes, down my skirt, off my tanktop, down my panties, off my bra if I happened to be wearing one. And there, on the rocks, wearing nothing but silver bangles and necklaces and long hair, I would lay myself down, the noonday sun flaming over my nakedness.

This was the memory. I went to this place frequently, alone, and did just that, all that. I think now objectively of this girl, presuming to be alone, water flowing over her young, bright body, her breasts even firmer than usual under the cold water, water rushing down between her legs, over her head, turning her light hair dark and heavy. Surrounded by green and more green, this dare, allowing the acknowledgement of her first lover, everything that she touched, that touched her. The brilliant sun and water spray, the stone warm and cold and slick. Yes, her first.

Could she have been anything other than beautiful, as from a dream? If ever she was witnessed she was left undisturbed, surely one wouldn't disturb such a scene, and who can know if such a sighting occurred? Left alone, she'll never know anything but the memory of wholeness, and beauty, and peace.