I was nineteen and on LSD the only time God spoke to me. Or, if not God, a voice so clear and clearly not my own it could have been the creek, still so clean we could kneel and drink. The day was warm, a thrum of insects, budding of cells, the fat leaves opening their pores, the building up of sugars and the breaking down, the trees’ green breath spilled into my lungs. I sat in the stream, a stone the water washed over, wearing away each rough surface. On the other shore she lounged against a boulder, branches above her, framed in a darkling shrine. The voice could have been the air itself, saying, Nothing you could do would ever be wrong. The words entered me like the sun pouring into the mouths of the leaves as they stirred, as the light sifted down on her slight shoulders, her freckled cheekbones.
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