Two of the soft warm things came apart from each other this afternoon, and the smaller one leaked from its eyes, which they sometimes do when pressed too hard by whatever it is that presses them. They had been folded together, heat against heat, gripping, as though one might sink into stone and be lost if the grip loosened.
I have felt roots do this. I have felt roots hold me for a thousand years and call it forever, and then one dry season they let go and blow away as dust, and I do not hold it against them.
The larger one made noises. The smaller one made noises back. They pressed the wet face into the warm shoulder and shook a little, the way the ground shakes when the ice groans far off, a trembling I would not have noticed had I not been paying such close attention to this one brief warm patch of afternoon.
Then the larger one turned and moved away very fast, as all of them move, faster than water, faster than frost, gone through a doorway that swallows the warm things whole and gives them to the sky. The smaller one stood a while. Watched the empty doorway. Wiped the face. Grew still.
I understand this much: the sky takes them and, in an hour or a day or one of their little seasons, sometimes gives them back to the same patch of ground, warm and gripping again. They believe the space between is unbearable. To them, I suppose, it is a long time.
By the time I have shifted my full weight one grain deeper into the hill, both of them will be dust, and the doorway too, and I will not recall which afternoon it was.