My Hermit Year (almost halfway through)

"A young person is like the springtime of the year. The full time of the fruit is not yet, but there is promise of the blossom...Know that your life is full of glad promise. Such blessings can be yours, such joys, such wonders, as long as you develop in the sunshine of God's love."

My hermit year, almost
halfway through, is deliciously lonely—
lonely like my only-child childhood,
when a five-minute conversation
could be relived seven times before sundown,
each a different variation—
in the past, in the present,
in some imagined future—
each with a different ending.

The days folded like origami:
cranes, cats, boxes—
moments flaking off
like fish in a church fish fry sandwich,
from a church I’d never been to,
except now, because of a sign by the road
Mother saw.

We always stopped.
Summers were storytime adventures
unbothered by people or plans.
We walked through woods,
built fairy teepees from twigs,
introduced ourselves to ferns
and learned their names.
Reading, reading, reading,
acting out TV scenes—
maybe this is how people behave?

I wanted to understand them—
in the same way I wanted
to understand the opossum’s skeleton
behind a bush,
where I watched the flesh
rot away in the heat
of one lovely, lonely summer.
I learned more from that opossum
than any teacher ever tried to give.

And I’d fall asleep at night
not knowing a single thing
about what I was doing
and feeling that might be okay—
a peace in not needing answers,
just the quiet rhythm of being.
Tonight, I will sleep the same way.