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¹¹ EMERGENT
❝ Moving on, just moving in slow motion to keep the pain to a minimal. ❞
―Daughter, How
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VERDANT FIELDS STRETCHED OUT far as the eye could see upon a mild blend of the scents of sprouting wheat, sour ryegrass, and freshly cut hay leaking from the windows to evoke nostalgia. The farmstead amongst the rolling hills bore a scenic rustic house. It was nestled proudly at the heart of the property with a bucolic barn to its south. Harlene almost confused the scene with their own in Lithonia — had it been yards smaller, entrenched in the ravage of history.
As the sun cast its golden glow upon Dale's face and revealed his lacrimose eyes, she knew he thought the same.
Her mother had sung to her once on a summer day. The hymn listened curled upon the pregnant belly, the only poem Emma had scratched onto the porch wood as a young girl. The melody warbled in Harlene's mind to the scenery, parting her lips absentmindedly.
"I am what I let in slowly. Days that float like silly clouds... Somehow I can't figure out how to live a day in, like some stream..."
She turned the heads inside the RV to herself, Dale far more surprised than Carol that she still remembered the words of that little nonsense song. Hugging her legs and resting her head on her knees, she knew them by heart, singing at a feeble tune, timid with her voice.
"Pieces seem to come together..."
"You sound just like your mother," Dale told her with a half smile, in terrible longing for his daughter. How unnatural it was for the root to remain and the seed to perish before...
Harlene smiled back, pained yet comforted by the praise. When he rested his wrinkled hand upon her young one, she did not push it away. It was said when the first tear fell from the left eye, it poured from the sadness of one's heart, while from the right, the joy. Dale's gracious eyes cried at once. Though they reminded her of his forsaking, she loved him too much to dwell on his culpabilities any longer.
