9. Mine

"I sit with the bush for a long time but it says nothing to me. It continues to burn, still mainly near the bottom. I listen harder and harder, feeling a certain despair build, wondering if it will ever reach out and talk, if ever I will understand the message meant for me, but then, just as I'm listening as hard as I possibly can, it hits me, pow, like that: It wants me to talk. My burning bush would be different, my burning bush would be like me.

So I clear my throat and I tell it things, I talk to that bush. I don't think I've ever said so many sentences in a row before, but I talk for at least an hour about myself-- about me and my husband and my mother and my allergies, and sometimes I don't know what to say and then I just describe what I see. The streets gray and paved. The ground is dry here. The sky is cloudless.

It's wonderful. It's wonderful to talk like that. After a while, I'm exhaused and I think I've said enough. I feel great but my throat is dry and I need some water, so, thanking it over and over, I leave the burning bush by the side of the road for somebody else. And I start to walk."

-from Aimee Bender's "Fugue"