ZOË (Part I)

by Marlon Thierry Laurent Fink. Posted in Text

Once upon a time, there was this little girl in a place unknown to some and of no particular name, but still there… somewhere, out there. So, yeah, it was a girl, five years of age, with brown hair and eyes of the color of hazelnuts, ripe, hanging from sun-lid trees somewhen in autumn.

And this girl, she wasn’t at all like the others, even her name – Zoë – five years of age, brown-haired, with eyes in a color alike. She used to jump when she walked, and lisp when she talked. Zoë – just not like the others – always looking upwards when she was supposed to look ahead, counting clouds up there in the sky, but still, the woods, these were her greatest passion.

With eyes squinted she counted clouds high above her head, always counting. Just like with trees, their leaves, arching in unknown heights above her. Ever exploring, but also counting the nature that surrounds her.

So on one of those strides through bright green pastures and high-hung arches of trees as huge as she would never be, leading her on paths that weren’t there for anyone but her, Zoë, a kid of the woods, the sky, animals, and the air.

Boulevards she could stride on all by herself, unknown to others in the midst of her homelands, counting her steps and the little jumps in between them, separately – naturally.

Zoë, a child of mother earth, she, whom brought her up cradled in most enticing flowers. Zoë’s hair reminds us of her, colored like freshly dug earth, still a bit humid like her hair as if freshly washed in the waterfalls, now, cradled by the nature that encloses her, a girl who lisps when she walks and jumps when she talks.

Zoë – five years of age, on one of her adventures, finds a friend in a frog, the girl counting his verrucae – once, twice, and thrice. Twenty, she said to herself, affirmably, twenty. How often he breathed, or rather sucked air in, or most exactly how his capillary skin helped him with it, during a count-to-ten.

Zoë loved the frog right away, him with the twenty verrucae on his capillary skin, breathing six times in ten seconds. A frog, who goes by the name Reginald, due to him being a descent of the waters – rain, streams, and swamps.

Oh, how many raindrops would he be existing of? Reginald, son of the wet and the earth, breathes six times in ten seconds with bulbous eyes watching a girl named Zoë, descendent of the sky and the trees, the earth and the sea.

They watch each other for hours a day, unseen by others, counting and breathing, breathing and counting, unseen by others watching each other for hours. They both grow older and miss each other more and more, yearning for the other, seeing their reflections in the eyes of the other while thinking about each other when they only see theirs in mirrors out of water.

Zoë, now, jumping higher than she ever did during her walks, climbing on tree-tops for seeing it all and calling out loud numbers she counted the instant she is done, from the tree-tops towards the grounds, fields and ponds, seagulls, ducks and hawks, squirrels, foxes and yaks, beetles, spiders and, of course, frogs. But no one of them listens as closely as Reginald, with eyes bulged out like rocks in a road, humming so softly when trying to float with great effort not to sink down under the water.