Click “Remember to stay close where I can see you and if you see something interesting, that’s fine, but don’t go into the woods without me, okay? We’ll meet here in twenty minutes with ten shots. Ready, set… go!” Click click click. Delia glanced behind her and caught a glimpse of her father watching her from behind the swing set. With a tight grip on her new purple camera, Delia filled her lungs with the warm air and the scent of fresh-cut grass and looked for potential in the objects and people around her. The bright blue canopy that always kept the rain that threatened to drizzle the fun out, the orange slide where she learned to take turns and to be patient, the green monkey bars where she conquered her fear of heights with her daddy, and a carpet of mulch that had caught her many times before--the mulch, a warm pecan color that reminded her of her favorite Christmas treat and her mother’s arms waiting for hugs before bed. Delia told her mom she was too old for bedtime stories, but she secretly wished she would never stop telling her the complicated adventures she made up on the spot because they always managed to 32 | SANSKRIT
by Alexsis Luciano make her life feel safe and filled with just the right amount of adventure for a seven-year-old girl. Delia smiled and bent down close to take a picture. After winding through the familiar tunnels and swaying swings, she snapped a few shots of her friends laughing and chasing each other. Delia paused as she came to edge of the playground’s border, looking out across the open field that led to the woods. Her and her daddy had only been a couple of times and they never went further than a few feet. They gathered leaves and sometimes, if they were lucky, different flowers for the nature journal she had been keeping up with. The last time they were searching for new plants, Delia came across a clearing with bunches of charming purple flowers that were shaped like a band of tiny horns with speckles inside their mouths. In wonder of how much they looked like a marching band with chicken pox, she had reached for them and her daddy stopped her hand right before it grazed the closest horn’s lips. “That’s Foxglove. I know it’s very pretty, but it’s poisonous, so I want you to stay away from it.” “It’s poisonous? But it’s so pretty. The speckles are so bright,
