
DAVID ALTWEGER

//When I was a little boy,
my mind couldn’t understand the grief I carried in my little heart and all my little feelings were tainted with shame.
School felt like a huge cold rock, crushing my little self,
and every day I failed to fulfil what was expected of me.
Instead of learning to learn I learned to disappoint.
One day in Autumn, walking to school, I decided to hide.
I snuck into a little forest and found a little hollow underneath the branches.
Covered by the thicket above, the softest moss and dead leaves beneath me,
I lay down and curled up.
//The forest had swallowed me.
I could smell the earth.
Faint, golden beams of sunlight were painting intricate, flickering patterns onto my skin, revealing little bugs dancing in the air around me.
I could hear the wind and the rustling of leaves and buzzing and crawling nothing else.
I lay still for what felt like a long, long time,
until my little fingers were stiff and cold.
At some point I crawled out of my little hollow,
slowly walking towards the house,
a little lie on my lips.
I told my mother that I had fallen Ill and
that I had thrown up and
that the nurse had sent me home for the day.
Many years and many lies later,
little by little,
I realised that the little boy I was then had never left the little hollow in the forest.
He was waiting there for me still,
under the branches,
on the softest moss.//
