Instead of imposing our human world onto the “more-than-human” world, Tess James helps us understand how the world arrives for her. “I step into the human world through the mirror of the more-than-human world, finding ease in its familiar safety. People exist in the background; my foreground is the present moment. Never empty. Always a canvas—Butterflies. Dried leaves. Twigs I like to hold. Worm castings brushing my heels. A bird call.” She breathes better. In fact, she says, “I am breathed,” in the way she breathed “a quiet sigh before I knew I needed one.” She also feels invited: “A twig. A dying lizard. The first summer rain. Everything calls, if I listen.” Tess seeks to understand “the nature of invitations in the human world too.” “Through the more-than-human world, I find the safety to look again—at the people who matter to me. I cannot live without notions. I cannot live without friends.”
