In the dew, beneath the canopy

When his feet began to burn and lungs began to ache, he'd find an pine with an adequately high canopy that he would crawl beneath. Then he would kneel below it as if in prayer, undoing his rucksack and drinking his water, then he'd sit. The hood of his poncho pulled over his head so as not to get sap in his hair. 

He'd sit and listen, inspecting the sounds of the woods, breathing slowly through his nose, not smiling and not thinking, and occasionally, sleep would come to him. He found it funny how it sneaks up on him. No one ever sees sleep coming until its done. 

In his daydreams, as he sat awake below the canopy, and in his sleep, he would revisit the college years. He would remember sitting in dim dormitories at midnight with people who, even now, he considered his closest friends; two parts drunk and speaking earnestly about love and fear and uncertainty, conversations he would never dream of broaching with his chums from grade school. He remembered the things that made them laugh and the things that made them sit in silence as if in pity. Most times, he remembered her. 

The memories of her would always start at the same place, her face illuminated by the ghostly blue light of the television in the dark. She seemed then - in the total dark with that look of strange calmness - like a ghost. No, not a ghost. A ghost is immaterial, fragmentary, she was something more. An avatar. He sat up straight while she inspected his face, like a predatory insect deciding whether or not it can or should eat him, him silent and attentive all the while, as if ready for whatever verdict she came to. In her he saw his future, in him she say something much more immediate. By his private reckoning, he figures she held him in a lower regard, though this could never be proven any which way by this point. 

One thing he was quite sure of was that while they were together, neither one had the other's undivided attention. As any time that they were together there was always a worry, like a spectator sitting alone in the far corner of the hall nervously watching a play, both judging the play but somehow strangely beholden to its outcome. The worry came from their age, she was a woman of fourty-two years, her life was sober and mature, clear and clean except in the matter of this entanglement; and for his part, he was a boy who was only beginning to stumble blindly into his twenties. There was no fear of legal repercussions. There was no conflict of interest, she didn't teach any of his courses, and he wasn't interested in taking them, and they were both adults who were careful, almost formal, in securing absolute and clear consent before so much as making dinner plans. But still. There was the scandal, the rumours, how it would look? He wondered if - in the case it ever got out - if people would see him as a manipulative little rake, carousing with mature women on some ulterior agenda. She wondered if they'd accuse her of grooming him. Sometimes she wondered if they'd try to push her out of her job at the university over this, just to save face. It seemed likely. The worry was always present, even if not in the foreground, like a post-card that sat on the windowsill. 

Despite the anxious spectator, the worry, they found a unique comfort in each other's private company, the intimacy was like a balm for the banality of their lives, it seemed. Sometimes he thought of describing it like a drug, but he hated describing it like that - how it framed their connection like a bit of casual escapism rather than what it was - an ascent rather than a detour. That's what it was for him, anyways. 

The memories would parade past him until he awoke. His poncho slick with the rain that rolled steadily through the pine boughs towards the earth like beads of glass. He'd feel sad for a moment. An absence in the center of his being. Then the feeling would vanish, replaced by a clarity, an absence of any feeling at all. Then he'd rise and stretch and don his bag and bow his head as he hunched beneath the canopy and stepped out into the day. He'd inspect the earth, and make an appraisal of how much more he had to cover today, and he would leave. Not thinking and not smiling. 

(some non-DG writing that came to me in the kitchen earlier)