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Reaching. Reaching.

What I reached for so long revealed itself today. In the trees, I find peace in the green—to feel small for once, even as the problems of my heart rise as high as the trees. For a moment, they float. They give me purpose. They make me a person when I am struggling to be one.  

These trees have saved lives.  

So many feelings overwhelm me; my head aches. I dropped her off at the airport, and my room was ill with the scent of home, so I strayed as far as I could while staying as close as I could (to the place I knew most in this foreign land).

I stretched out on the stone bench—edit after edit—taking my mind off things. The deer looked at me thrice.  

I feel.  

I felt as a child. They have revolutionary thoughts, some psychedelic revelation. I was twelve—why did it have to be this way?

Three parts torn into to get the fruit. Three different ways: one tries to become a tree, the other shrivels up and dries, and the third, a different color, holds a little moisture.  

Why did it have to be this way?  

Why couldn't He have spared them from knowing sin’s taste?  

Why must He make them reach for it again and again?  

Why must He force me to have enough of it done to me so that I never know sin’s taste?
  
Why am I forced to watch as their hands reach for it?  

Why can't my hands move when their hands can’t reach anymore?  

And I don’t want to hold your hand now, not when I have been begging for yours for years. I never stopped reaching, and now you ask why I don't reach now.  

You hear the truth in what I say, and you question what has happened. It was always there. You just never heard it.

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