"Do you wish to go back?"

'Back where?' I find myself asking. The voice seems to echo throughout this blackness where there is no ground nor air.

"Do you wish to go back?"

The question booms ferociously like the lion's roar above the mountaintops, making those in the quiet valley below pause and shake.

"Do you wish to go back?"

'Oh, you're still here? I thought that if I stayed quiet you would go away.'

"Do you wish to go back?"

'Back where?' I find myself asking. 'Back to the times that I wished the letters that spilled out of my lips tumbled into different words than what they came out to be?'

"Do you wish to go back?"

'Back to the times where I felt quarantined when in a group of friends? Back to the times where I felt the grass wrap around my ankles to root me in place? Back to the times where I heard the leaves gossip my name?'

"Do you wish to go back?"

'Further you ask? I assure you that's not a time that I would enjoy going back to.'

"Do you wish to go back?"

'I do not know.'

"Do you wish to go back?"

'Will the words I said make sense? Will I not feel so trapped in my groups of friends? Will the blades of grass release my feet and the whispering cease from the abundance of leaves? Will I find love, happiness, or defeat? Will I find something that makes sense to me?'

"Do you wish to go back?"

There is a pause, a stillness in the dark. I wish to speak but I feel that I have no words left. I am the letter in an envelope of shade, swallowed by the surrounding shadows. Then it comes, I feel the ground beneath my feet and air above my head. It slowly churns from my stomach up to my mouth where I then said,

"I wish to go back."