The Breath of Small Things

The taste of summer always arrives as a fine, dry grit on the tongue, the kind that settles after a long walk through tall, sun-baked grass. I remember the sensation of my palms pressing into the earth, the soil cool and damp beneath the surface, a secret kept from the heat of the day. There is a specific, ticklish friction when you brush your fingers against something so fragile it threatens to dissolve into the air. It is the feeling of holding a promise that is already halfway to becoming a ghost. We spend so much of our lives trying to anchor things, to pin them down with our heavy, clumsy intentions, forgetting that some of the most profound weight is carried by the things that are meant to fly away. My skin still remembers the phantom prickle of those tiny, feathered anchors catching on my sleeve. How many of our own quiet desires have we released into the wind, trusting the air to carry them where we cannot follow?

Tisha Clinkenbeard has captured this delicate surrender in her beautiful image titled To Wish upon a Dandelion. It carries the same quiet, fleeting texture of a breath held just before it is let go. Does this image stir a memory of a wish you once sent into the sky?