Lauren Haug Fisher

By Lauren Fisher

Written March 16, 2024

My eyes are melting.  They’re dry, yet sweaty.  I’m not used to this heat.  20°C is such a contrast from the gloomy days of rainy downpour and frost on my windshield.  Still, in the summer months, it will reach the mid 30’s °C.  It may reach just above 40°C during severe heat waves.  Still, I welcome today’s warmth.

Sitting in the sun on the front porch stirs feelings of life within me.  I am a flower, transforming the sun into energy to feed my growth, to stir me into motion, and to remind me that winter is over.  Spring has arrived.  It’s the time of rebirth.  The deciduous trees regain their leaves.  Flowers blossom.  Bees linger among the garden beds.  Birds chirp, flying overhead, stopping at the tree branches, and searching for water in this developing heat.

It’s all as if to say, “We are here.  Life.  The sun may burn yet life persists.  We exist.  We know light.  We know the dark.  We emerge to learn, to grow, and to evolve over the generations.”

I am more than a human in sandy-brown pants, a marbled grey and white shirt, plastic blue sandals and green prescription sunglasses.  I am more than the purple-bound journal on my lap and the black Paper Mate pen with which I write.  I am more than the tin can of President’s Choice mandarin sparkling water resting atop the side table that matches the patio chairs.

I am, in fact, an organism.  I am a creature of God.  While I am clothed and commodified, I am still nature.  On sunny days such as these, I do not feel so removed from the planet that birthed me.  I do not feel as though the solar system is different and at an incredible distance.  No, on sunny days such as these, where my fingers sweat and the slightest breeze is refreshing, I feel at home in this corner of our galaxy.  I belong here.

Although the society of humans can be quite clear in their exclusion, with their expectations of how we ought to human, our mere existence is our birthright to be alive right now.  By some miracle, molecules collided and created life.  I am a such life.

What then may my potential be?  What more does this existence have to offer me, and I to it?  Questions like these propel me forward.  I cannot wait to discover more of my life.