Metaphor

I can't seem to get off this metaphor kick. I think is the one I should have turned in.

The Fox

I was five miles from the nearest house, ten from the nearest road, deep into the quiet whispers of the woods. But still close enough to the place we met that you were preying on my mind. The forest was thick and the trees were clicking with afternoon bugs.

Up ahead, a scratch of path unfurled revealing rich black soil. Sometime not too long ago, wild boar were through here. Every rush of wind was a bear of blinding height with dripping jaws and claws.

I pressed in deeper, along the twisting path, under the towering cypress and the domed oak hammocks, running from the creaking branches and my stimulated imagination, all the while fighting the specter of your taunting smile, promising from just around the next bend.

I went alone into the pine flats, insulated by green explosions of palmetto. Only deer tracks, delicately crossing through the gray sand hinted that the forest breathed life in my absence.

On my back were the things I carried that I thought I would need. Only now was I finding that water was all that mattered. I pulled out the bottle and stopped and what was behind me, what I'd left behind caught up. The memory clung like the remnants of a fever. I rested in the verdant grass and felt the power of my fingers passing over blades and pulling others absently from their holds, panting and remembering your voice, your touch, the memories I'd wanted to make with you.

When it was time to go, I had forgotten. I recited the mnemonic of sympathy that reminds me to move on. And so I lifted my leaden pack once more onto my back and pressed forward, towards a clearing.

As I entered the clearing, a fox crossed my path. I stopped, my eyes drawn from the ground by the sudden flash of smoothed brown fur, reflecting the waning sunlight. She watched me as she sauntered across the trail, her tail close to the ground, pulsing left and right. Our eyes met in the the silence of the forest—I stopped for fear of loosing my step. She approached the edge of the tree-line and sat on the grass, panting, alternating between watching me and scanning the nearby forest. Her legs were black with mud and the tips of the fur on her downy white stomach were covered in matted dirt.

I could think of nothing to do but crouch on one leg and place my hands upon the ancient earth.

A spin of glistening brown and a soft scratch of paws on needles and she was gone, back into the ether of the thicket.

And I, there on the well trodden path, defined through the woods like an explanation of how I could never leave, could never wander from the winding lines of civilization.

I turned and began back the way I'd come.