myth for mayapple

There is a grandmother who lives underground and knits with roots. She cracks her toes and the plants come up, she sings a song and they flower.

There is a cold place in the wood. But you can’t go there in your body as if through a door. You can go there in your spirit. Human senses like windows, all out in the world. To be in this place you must walk out of your body. Dreams are natural - as natural as a rainbow. They are an epiphany of grandmother who lives in the soil who giggles and farts as she thinks of it. So if you forget this dream - if you push it down and willfully forget it, it will start to drip out of your pores. It’s like forgetting how to use your thumbs. 

Once you have left your body and live only in the dream - I’ll guide you there. There are secrets here in this forest that can only be told with listening ears.  You will see the turtle people and the spider people dancing together with their umbrellas.

The night is nothing but soil a rich and endless soil that the grandmother tends when the moon is full and a bead. These plants came from the deep from the bone of the grandmother. She is the shimmer in the night. She is that which rubs your eyes in the dark so that you can see. She dove into the earth because the world was so full of horror. Now that she lives in the soil. She waits for spring when the turtles come up and tickle her massive green toes. She gives them fruit in return. The forest wants to see the ancient woman feel joy- just like it wants that for you, and for the box turtle too.

Where the mayapple comes that is a bitter terrible plant that is sweet for a day and night in June on the warmest day, when the fireflies encircle this place. She’ll return and whisper one truth. 

Something in my story is a lie. That is the poison of reality.