Arukou

Walking through the woods on the edge of the river on the edge of the city on the edge of twilight. It’s hazy, and the trees are thick and tangled, some of their brown skeletons fallen right onto the path. There’s nothing to think about, just the buzz of a podcast over headphones and the unseasonably warm (though still chilly) weather. Alone. Empty. Legs tiring and turning back, following the same path, I’m hit suddenly with the urge to cry, the urge to burst into tears and crouch on the ground with my arms around my knees. The podcast is nothing is white noise is nonsense. Sun below the horizon but sky still pasty blue shading toward white. I walk on, baffled, afraid. On the path just outside the trees, the path that leads back to civilization, there is a skull that was not there before. I’m sure of it. It was not there. I pick it up and study it. Small, bleached white, foresnout broken off, though the canines and molars remain. So old moss grows on one set of teeth, oddly green and fresh against the dead winter landscape. What was it in life? A racoon? A coyote? A cat? I can’t put it down again. I clutch it’s brain case between two fingers and walk on. The sign for the rundown motel along the river has changed. The “T” in “WITH” now hangs crookedly where before it was straight. I stare at it and then look down at the little skull. Back up again. I think of that moment in the woods, the sudden wrenching, standing on the edge of everything, and wonder if I didn’t stumble over a border into a place I was not meant to be. Am I in the same world returning that I was embarking? Is the stone beneath the feet or the air in my lungs unchanged, or is it now tinged with cosmic radiation just oh so slightly different from before? My legs are tired. So tired. Did I walk right through to the other side of the universe? There are no answers at hand, and so I walk the rest of the way home, staring down at the little skull. Its empty eye sockets gaze back, its perfect little white teeth jutting from its nose. I climb into my car and set it on the dash. There it remains. Watching. Waiting. Reminding.