In the Stillness

By Peter Bowden



The woman lay in the grass, her back pressed flat to the earth. The sky stretched above her, a dome without end, and she watched as clouds drifted like old ships across it. Her hands rested at her sides, open and unguarded, as though the ground itself had claimed her for a while.

The air carried the weight of summer, warm and close, but in it was a hum—a quiet chorus of bees, the far call of a crow, the whisper of leaves shifting against one another. She closed her eyes and felt herself dissolve into it all, the body becoming a shore upon which every sound broke gently, then disappeared.

In that stillness, the world tilted. The earth seemed to breathe beneath her, steady and slow, as though reminding her that time was vast and unhurried. She thought of how the sky had watched every person before her, every child who had once lain in the grass, dreaming of what might come. And for a moment, she belonged entirely—body to earth, soul to sky, memory to eternity.


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