How do men walk this world?

Men walk in full gear. Helmet and fatigues and boots. A weapon in their arms. At every step of the way, they are ready for the perpetrator to swing down from the trees, rise up from the ground, aim arrows from afar. They get ready to defend, deflect, and protect. Arms strong, biceps bracing, Pecs pushing.  They hit with accuracy and force.

And women?

Women fight with their words and their tears and their anger and fear. Also with their love and with their bodies. They can turn them on to glow in the dark or turn them off to blend in with the silent forest in which they live.
While their men walk the land, crushing leaves under their boots, steel clicking with each movement—they, women, become one with the air and the earth and the water and the moonless sky. Their men walk through them, pave way in their soil, bask in the comfort of their trunks just a bit longer before getting up again and heading back out into the dark field.

And when do men see their women?

Just before they fall asleep. In those moments when their vision blurs and one tree becomes two and then three. Or when they bend down for fresh snow water and they meet their reflection—an origami image of what they thought they knew. (Men don’t like to drink water.)
They also see the women when they turn on their night vision goggles. But then they see them differently—restless green grains making up a skeleton, hair, breasts, teeth, hiding their naked face in the leaves. The vision so unpleasant, these men immediately turn away.

And do men ever meet their women?

Rarely. Mostly they stay in packs as they travel the earth. Quietly, methodically. They follow orders from above. They take turns sleeping, eating, carrying supplies. They follow protocol in the night—defending their ground, and in the day—they conquer more.

But sometimes, in the early dawn hour, between night and day, between wakefulness and sleep, as the mountains stand still and the trees arch to listen in, they see them in what they can only call ‘a dance.’ Wisps of warm air, their breath hums as it rides the hills, their toes stir snow atop a creek, leaves gleefully swirl before they return to caress the ground below. They see them taking their positions between the trees as they wait, prepared for their men to take their turn again…and come back the following day. They cross lands, walk through vast forests, sail through oceans never once realizing every night they come back to the same place.