Snap

I'm deep in shivasana when I hear it. Slow breaths, muscles settling and letting go of the day, a peaceful winding down to sleep. Silence. 

And then, for just a second, a sharp sound not afforded the padding of traveling in through the windows. Something from within the walls. Just that quick snap, nothing else, no lingering sensation. Something was here, now it is not. 

I close out my reverie, gather my being inside my body again. Walk to the kitchen, unthinking. 

In the corner of the room, in the little gap between the kitchen counter and the crooked wall, a mouse trap lies sideways, released. The trespasser perfectly captured in a square, its soft body draped across the pad, eyes wide, pleading, its long tail still. A New Yorker is forever at war with the mouse, but it is no less of a life, no less of a heartache to witness the results of battle. The death quiets me. 

As it should. 

Cygnes

A quiet day passes. Not even the mouses stirs, and you wonder what else you should be doing. The appointment in the calendar continues to wave its flags in your direction, you weave around it like a cat on a hot tin roof, never not aware it's there. 

The story begins to fall apart at your fingertips, you question your abilities, the youth in your veins. It's been too many years since everything seemed possible. 

You've reached a point where all you aim to do is 
survive. 

Slush

A page turns in the almanac, a new month, a step closer to spring. The snow recedes from the flower pot on the fire escape, the small body of a dead mouse resurfacing, reminding itself to you. Life is so frail, so fleeting, when you see it on the other side. Death doesn't scare you so much as soften you. There's a gift in there, perhaps, but it is hard to look directly at it. 

The week ahead intimidates you. There's a date in the calendar, an appointment in the books, and you cannot look away from it, cannot distract yourself with tasks closer at hand. There may be no way around it. The only way out is through. 

You were raised to know right from wrong, and to do the right. That doesn't go away just because the woods get dark. You were raised in the woods, raised to know there was always a way out. You see a new year open up before you, see opportunity and potential in the paperweights of the world, see the sheets of paper unravel and fly around you. There's a surrealist air to the brush strokes, a Daliesque quality to your tumble down the rabbit hole. All your best stories were written in madness, in wonder. Why should this year be any different? 

The remaining mouse scampers across the kitchen floor while you sleep. 

If you didn't know better, you'd think he was inviting you along.