Behind the Crooked Fence

The light gleams through narrow slits cutting harshly into the bush, a warm embrace of wilted flowers and thorns. I push through the carefully, wincing as nature pokes and prods until open wounds bleed onto the untouched soil. My grit kept the adrenaline pumping through my veins, the sense of adventure in the air. 

I stand among the broken branches and thick entanglement; the world ceases to spin, crystalized in place. The beauty, the wonder, the comfort found behind the crooked fence holds its own in a world of industry... just barely hanging by a thread.

Tang, a microscopic strand cries; government property, they cry, I am not my own. 
Tang, another snaps, flinging into the air. Worthless I am, the branches sway and scream, a worthless island of untarnished savage wilderness. 
Tang. The doddery wooden ladder of old leaning against the wise oak crashes to the ground. 
    Tang. Years of memory and heartache, tears permanently soaked into the dirt, dissolve.  
        Tang. The rhythm of a dance birthed from toska, spiritless tassitude, a pain too strong to contain... the dance fades into the abyss of a world burnt to the ground. 

Gazing up at the velvety puffs, drifting softly across the blue skies, I allow a single salted sorrow to drift from my lashes, stroking my cheek with motherly tenderness before tumbling down. Tears begin to fall from the sky, in harmony with my own. I run my palm over the crooked fence; the roughness under my fingertips, the russet, sepia, dear chocolate brown color, the groan of the shaft as my dirtied black boots wind up and over. Echoes, quiet in the chaos of nostalgia, haunting voices of memories once found, once bruised, once dying, now fallen. 

I laugh, a sound pure and real. Fallen are the thoughts, the sadness, the recollections once treasured... but the fence, stubborn as I once was, stands tall among the darkness. A bulwark that will never dwindle, and home forever my own, behind the crooked fence.