as a child i was frighten, as an adult, i am weary when i walk the forest’s edge, a real and imaginary line between night and day, light and dark, life and death, the delineation of my tamed civilized world, and the chaos of the savage wilds.

i remember walking along the edge as a child, holding my mother’s hand, looking into the darkness, hoping to see something magical, to justify my fears, dismiss my suspicions, anything to alleviate the mundane, monotonous, insipidness of my bleak, desolate quotidian life.

i imagined mythical creatures in the forest, with the thrill and horror of an occasional siting of a real wolf trotting along the tree line, stopping at the site of me, making eye contact for a moment before slipping back into the darkness of the forest, feeling like prey, a rabbit in the middle of a meadow, hyper vigilant, knowing death is an instant away