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A recorded reading of “The Gate Stands Still”. If the player does not load, use the original audio source.
She wears a small spring sky on her head— petals hoisted like lanterns, a hush of pinks that makes the woods lean in. Two trails blur behind her, twin veins, where the forest signs with sap then smudges it in the same breath. Her dress is a whisper of water, slipping over shoulder and bone, spilling a silver syllable of skin. Wind combs her hair into question marks. What now? Which bough? The moss answers in soft, sibilant s: stay, stray. She is meadow and marker, thistled and thrilled, a bloom-bearer. Even the shadows soften, as if night forgot to be strict, and the light stalls, loitering like a secret. She doesn’t move. She chooses. By not choosing she becomes the gate. And somewhere a bird rehearses dawn; upstream a river revises its rhyme. She lifts her face and wears the word: now.
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