curbside confessions

It was in the wake of spring that the winter wind changed and it was then that he knew she had returned. One could feel the breath of the redwoods as the snow melted. The air became somewhat musty; The ground became somewhat green. But the air was cold for a frigid air came out of the north and set it's unrelenting grasp upon the woodland. In this bitter breeze that the man's breath slowly unraveled in a trail of thin white mist. His heart was a slow and stupid thump among the silent redwoods; even as that woman trespassed upon what was his. His heart was hard, another black rock against the backdrop of red trunks. He wanted to believe in the smoldering ashes she had left in her absence but it was quite possible that it had extinguished in the winter.



So he would lie motionless, talon splayed across what he had made his: the damp sod of the woodland he had claimed, of the freshly scratched den which in his daughter slept soundly. The man's eyes burnt like blue coals in the night and they would stare forward, his crown lifting to greet the ghost before him. Ho, stranger. You must know you're trespassing. Lucky it wasn't the cat you came upon first. he would speak, jowls clenching lightly at the close of his sentence.