myth for cape york lily

Needless to say, they found me soon after I pierced the grass man’s foot with my knife. I didn’t hide, I didn’t leave. The threads that thinly cocooned the town, however, unraveled. In the hours the grass man stopped weaving the dodder threads, openings made their way through the netting above us and we began to see the sky.

One would think the sky is constant, but here the sky reflects us. It is the face in a mirror staring back at us. Sometimes it is terrifying and sometimes it is forgiving. Since the grass men came and saddled us with work, we had forgotten to notice the fluctuations of the sky.

But with the blue of day, the pink of evening, and the black of night peering through, we saw something that had been missing for a long time, and we saw the tatters in our own souls. It didn’t make us stop working, but it caused an important friction. I don’t know how the friction is going to be important but it will be.

I didn’t hide. I had nowhere to go. I have my sons to take care of, and my mother, who is becoming allergic to the river that is fouling up now the birds were gone. I knew that I would rather be here - in our town - than anywhere, even if it meant being unfree. The prison is in the central quarter of the city. This is where they put me. It is dark. The last time I was in shadow like this was before the grass men came. Normally the grass men’s bureaucracy holds them to drawn out processes. So I assume I will be here for some time.

A window the width of my body lets the air in. It has become cold as autumn descends, but I have a thin blanket and look at the trees dance outside. A gust of wind threw a dead branch into my room like a miracle, and with this branch I begin write on the floor - invisibly. I need to somehow be outside of myself here. And with my story coating the floor I can let parts of me go.

When I put the branch to the cement floor, my back bent like a supplicant, I write the word “you.” And just by writing this word all at once I can feel a presence, though I can’t see you, the precious listeners of stories. You want to know what happened before the grass men came. You want to know where the others went. Life may have been better back then, but there was a time when the sun became so very small that we lived in darkness. But the darkness was more than dark. It was alive. We could hear it whisper when we tried to sleep. Some fell in love with it. Some would fight with it. We became ill, along with all the plants and animals. The sun had kept us healthy. We lost our hair and our teeth chipped, our eyes became pained from peering into the dark. The only one who didn’t seem bothered by the darkness was the pink lily of the forest. She wore a rosy crown, all woven with the thick locks of her hair so that birds could nest in it.

She may be gone now. There are barely any forests anymore. It was she who gave us light when there was none. It was she who gave us sustenance from her golden roots. It was she who taught us the sun’s song, and before long the sun came back.

But we had changed. Some of us had disappeared into the shadows. The native turmeric, cape york lily, I long for her now when the days extend and I am trapped here in this dim place.

The one to whom I speak was no person at all, but a ghost. Maybe from the limestone quarry, maybe someone lost at the edge of town. Barely there, swirling, coming and going in the wind. Somewhere in the back of my thoughts, in the deepest part of my imagination I conjure the cape york lily. I know I will find gold in her memory, I will have dignity in her crown.