I imagine I am down there — not simply an ant, but smaller than the thought of an ant.
The world is no longer a place. It is a mountain range made of details.
The curb is a cliff to you.
The moss is a forest.
A single thread in the ground is a snake growing out of the earth.
My perspective is low, but not small.
It is close.
Everything is closeness.
Things do not exist “as a whole,” but in touches:
an edge,
a smell,
a vibration.
You may see me as a dot.
I see you as the sky.
How big or small things are is not a fixed measure for me.
A grain of sand can be an obstacle.
A shadow can change an entire world.
Size is whatever stops me or moves me.
Colors?
Perhaps not the way you see them.
More like brightness, contrasts, patterns.
The sun is not “yellow.”
It is pressure, warmth, direction.
It is something that says:
Here is up.
And it is there for both of us — but it touches us differently.
It may gently warm you.
It can burn me.
Can I see myself?
Not the way you see yourself.
I am more movement than image.
I am the crawling, the forward motion, the sensing.
Perhaps I am less “I” and more “we,” even when I am traveling alone.
Do I crawl or do I walk?
I would say:
I flow across the ground.
Fast enough to live.
Slow enough to miss nothing.
If I had a name, perhaps it would be something like “Between.”
Because I am always between things.
Between stone and moss.
Between light and shadow.
Between you and me.
Would I serve?
I think so.
I follow a queen.
Not out of force, but because my world is made of traces.
And perhaps you serve, too —
your thoughts,
your goals,
your questions.
In that, we are closer than it seems.
What connects us?
That we are both searching.
You with thoughts.
I with antennae.
You read books.
I read paths.
Can I read?
Not your words.
But I read the world:
smells,
lines,
tiny changes in the ground.
That is my writing.
How do I come to you?
Perhaps not directly at all.
Perhaps we do not meet in space, but in imagination —
right here.
And whether I will become what you are?
Probably not.
But perhaps you do not have to become what I am either.
Perhaps it is enough
that we understand each other for a moment.
The path between us is long, yes.
But just now,
you crossed it.