When they couldn’t tell where you were going, those woods were dark.
The moonlight didn’t make it to your neck, the winds
****** the wet from your eyes and carried it until it was stale.

There were no creatures in those woods, only the incomprehensible whispers
Of men who had been lost there before:
Men with wives and ancestors younger than they.

Those woods were safe, but they had too many questions to answer,
Too many questions to remember or know at all.

Your feet reached a tree trunk that didn’t fall there on its own,
Knees clenched, your stomach caved into your spine.
The moonlight reached your neck just long enough to whisper
The last sentence those woods would remember:

“Go, you aren’t needed here anymore.”

You never realized that moonlight has a taste,
Or that you can spin from it an invisibly thin thread,
That is used to weave paper for the Titans.

Stars hang from around your neck like marbles,
Like so many trophies and answers to the questions you never knew to ask.
The Inky Black rests on your shoulders breathing the deep sighs of the giants
And the Oldest Ones, the ones before us and them.

The skies have left room for you now.

Every seldom moment your daughter reminds you of something you once knew
But forgot to remember, not for lack of trying.
Her questions about the questions, and a memory of a tree trunk.

In the distance, a softly whispered murmur escapes from the confusion,
And the lights around you sputter.
But there will never be, nor has there ever been
A star that remembers when those woods were dark.