Grave Matter

by Karina Halle

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others” DOSTOYEVSKY

The fog is more corporeal yet delicate, reminding me of cobwebs that don’t seem to move but stretch across the tips of the trees.

Life has a way of conditioning you, and when you’ve gone to the school of hard knocks, you expect those knocks each time.

See, boys are allowed to be mad scientists. But when women do it? We’re simply labeled crazy. And even at eight years old, I knew there was a difference.

Grief is funny like that. It lives alongside you, sometimes in silence, and then a random thought, or memory, or smell will punch through you like a fist, your bleeding heart in its grasp, and you have to relive it all over again. I often think of grief as a cycle from which there is no escape, an ouroboros, a snake of sorrow eating its tail.

Trees might not have eyes, but they communicate to each other through the mycelia that travels under the earth. The mycorrhizal network allows trees to shoot more nutrients to saplings, such as those in the shade, giving them a better chance at survival. They see without eyes.