Heal

I remember this place. I thought to myself. The trees, the brook, and the distant sounds of life. All of it, smothered by ash and smoke. I come out here to calm down; to let the embers that I held in my palms slip through my fingers, and let them drift down into the river to be extinguished. But everything was gone, everything had burnt down.

"Bad did this," a woman's voice asked me from behind, "didn't he?"

I turned around, and Soul was hovering at the edge of the clearing, above a small wisp of a tree that still retained its color.

“He did.” I replied, holding myself. “Why?”

“You need to hold him better.” She mumbled, changing voices. “He needs a shorter leash.”

“Yeah,” I snapped, “no shit, thanks for the advice. I thought that you were supposed to be common sense, not obviousness.”

I could feel her glaring at me. She didn’t move. I stayed near the outcropping.

“Can’t you just leave me alone for once? Can’t I just be out here, alone?”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” She said through what must have been a grin.

“Okay, I give up.” I exasperated, flinging my arms in the air. “What is the metaphorical lesson that you want to teach me today?”

“I’m going to teach you nothing.” She proclaimed, still standing above the colored tree.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m not going to teach you anything.” She said once more. “I just expect you to fix all of this yourself.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Fix the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Why should I? Bad started it, he should be the one to fix it.”

“That’s not how that works either. Just because he’s the one who started it doesn’t mean that he has to be the one that fixes it. That is not how life works.”

“I don’t care! I didn’t start it, I don’t want to be the one to fix it!”

“You’re not understanding me. This is not how life works.”

“I don’t care,” I said once more, tears welling up in my eyes, “I’m tired of cleaning up after him.”

“Well I still expect you to fix this.” She said simply, edging towards me.

“How?” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I’ve been using the wrong words. I don’t mean ‘fix,’ I mean ‘heal.’”

“That didn’t help me at all.”

She sighed, and started to float away,

“I’m sorry.” She said once more. “I wish that I could be more descriptive. But I just can’t.”

“I won’t hold it against you.” I sighed. “You came out of my head, after all.”

“‘Fixing’ has the implication that if you follow through with it and find a solution to the problem will cease to exist. That it will never resurface or be of any harm or foul. But ‘healing’ has a sort of non-permanancy to it. A solution can be found, but it the problem may come back after a while.”

“So,” I tried to explain, “it’s like how you can fix a problem with a car, and have a pretty much guaranteed chance that the problem won’t come back, unless you messed it up?”

“Correct!”

“But you can’t fix a cut. You can still get cut again, even in the same place. Even just the linguistic use of the word ‘fix’ doesn’t even fit in there right…”

“Too far English major…”

“Am I at least on the right track?”

“The metaphor is a little off, but yeah, you’re right.”

“Alright then,” I complained, “make a better one?”

“Look around you.”

“The forest?”

“You can’t fix it. There is no permanent solution to the problem. You can never keep another tree from being cut down, and you can never keep another ember from landing upon its roots.”

“Well if you want me to heal the forest, I really don’t know where to start; the English major doesn’t really teach you a whole lot about botany.”

“This is where I can’t help you.” She said.

“Oh, of course.”

“I can’t tell you what wounds to heal. Of course you can, and probably should develop some sort of strategy, in which you heal the large wounds first and the small ones second.”

“I’m pretty sure most people would have the common sense to try to heal a leg that’s been sliced open before they try to tackle a papercut.”

“Well actually,” she stuttered, “now that I think about it, you may not have to do that.”

“Please,” I sighed again, “do elaborate.”

“In your opinion, which is the harder task: making your bed in the morning, or writing an academic paper from the beginning?”

“Depends on the paper.”

There was a silence wedged between us. I could feel her glaring at me.

“Okay,” I gave in, “making the bed is easier…”

“So which is going to take less time? Which is going to take less willpower? Less energy?”

“Making the bed, in all of those situations.”

“So,” she continued, “if you write the paper first, and then make the bed, will making the bed be easier? Considering that you have the big project out of the way?”

“Sure?”

“Then there ya have it!”

Another silence was interjected between us. Now it was my time to glare at her.

“What?” She responded.

“I loathe your ambiguity.”

“Like I said before: if common sense were easier to understand, a lot more people would have it.”

“I like how that’s your excuse.”

“Is it not good enough?! Because it’s pretty spot on! Would you like me to make a metaphor for your arrogance and ignorance?!”

“I would rather you not…”

“You have an opportunity here,” she hissed, her voice shaking as it transposed, “one that you don’t want to miss out on.”

I said nothing; I folded my arms across my chest.

“What holes do you want to heal in this world? Will you spend your life healing every wound that this world has? Or will you be the one to just throw a bandage over it and call it good? Or will you even bother trying?”

I placed my hands on my hips, and sighed, looking around at the burnt woodland.

“I can see it in your eyes.” She continued. “You want to fix every problem that the world has, just like most sane people do. They want to be the one who fixes everything. Well I can tell you right now that you won’t be.”

“I know.”

“You think that the time that you have left on this word will be spent wasting it on a menial job with menial pay, occasionally celebrating the remaining free time in the company of friends and family.”

“You’re optimistic.”

“I said that that’s what you think. I don’t have a clue what your life will be like; that’s for you to forge.”

Her voice was shaking and cracking, and the world began to fade away.

“What holes do you want to heal?” She asked once more. “It’s not a decision that I can make for you. You have to be the one to make it yourself. You think that your efforts to heal and fix will be mostly in vain.”

I looked down below her, and a small flower began to bloom.

“But sometimes,” she stated, her light forcing more flowers to grow from the ground, “it won’t.”