THE ANT

I pushed my writing desk beside a window with a beautiful view of Lake Atitlan, so I could see the wall of fire blossom vines connected to my bungalow. When my mind went blank, I looked at the vines and brilliant orange blossoms for inspiration. The vines never stopped growing, always reaching out attempting to connect all things, and during their struggle, occasionally there would sprout a fire blossom. I kept that window beside my desk open for two months, and for two months, I wrote my thoughts, and my sentences grew like vines, and occasionally fire would blossom. As the months passed and the mystical nature of Panajachel crept into the marrow of my bones, the vines grew in through my window, and one day I felt an ant crawling upon my hand. I watched as it crawled down my pen and onto the paper, and all over my thoughts.

Once it explored my story, it crawled back up my pen, back up my hand, and then onto the vine, and it was then I realized the vine had grown in through my window and had, in fact, grown around my arm. I looked out my window at the vine-covered wall, at the fire blossoms, and then out at the horizon of Panajachel and Lake Atitlan, and at the volcanos upon its distant shore. I thought about fire, and the strange burning in the marrow of my bones, I thought about my words, I thought about my thoughts, I thought about my story, and then I had a realization. This was not my story to tell. The story belonged to nature. Just as vines connect all things in this strange town on the shore of Lake Atitlan, all of life is interconnected through vines, through the fire in the marrow of our bones, through our words, thoughts, through our story.

I wrote about this place, but the place tells the story, it tells the story through the vines, the vines that grew up the walls and into my mind. The vines growing around my arm, made me at one with this place, at one with nature, at one with the story. I was no longer the storyteller, I had become the story, as the vines spoke through my arm. Not just my story, but the story of this place, the story of life, its beauty, its tragedy, its poetry, and prose. The vines are the between, the pause between words, the moments of reflection when we stop, and with an empty mind stare out the window at the fire blossoms. The mountains of fire on the horizon, it is here that all things come together. The story is not told but heard. All words at once, in one moment. Words not read, but felt, felt in the fire in the bones' marrow, and gently upon the flesh as the ant returns.