Be Not Far from Me

by Mindy McGinnis

“Bears,” Cory repeats his brother. “Shit, yes, there’s bears. That’s what got Davey Beet, right?”

“What’s the story there, bro?” I hear Cory ask Duke. “Was she banging him?” “Really? You’re going to ask her boyfriend that?” Meredith says, and I know she’s staring down Natalie when she says boyfriend. The warm rush of affection I feel is quickly replaced by cold, like someone dropped an ice cube down my throat, when Duke says, “Naw, man. Nothing like that. She just fucking idolizes him.”

No, I’m not freezing and I’m not starving, and I know both these things are true because I’m in pain. When you can’t feel anything is when you need to worry.

I know how to make a shadow stick—a nifty trick involving the morning sun and a decent-size stick jammed in the ground sundial-style. You mark the end of the shadow, wait a bit, then mark where the shadow has moved to and bisect those two lines, and your new line is pointing east-west.

Trees are thieves. They take things from you quietly, swiping a bandanna from your ponytail or a hair tie from your wrist. I’ve seen hundred-dollar sunglasses hanging off maples, and water bottles snagged on low-hanging willows, their wispy fingers pulling things from hikers’ packs without them knowing they lost something until they need it.

I’ve never felt so lonely, but I’m the one that’s going to die, and there’s no one here to stop that from happening but me.

Maybe I’ll get a therapy dog out of this whole mess. Good thing I don’t have one now though, ’cause I’d eat it.

I taught them that there’s nothing worse than humans. And while I learned it young myself, I didn’t ever want to have to be the one bearing the message.

Be not far from me,’” I say. “‘For trouble is near and there is no one to help.’”

But you, LORD, be not far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me.’”

Because I knew, every time I left my house for the woods, that it could kill me. I just never believed it would try.

the world is not tame and neither are people, or how I feel about them.