The Woods and the Words

For years he carried weapons. There was the shotgun for ducks, the deer rifle, the .22 for squirrels, the razor-tipped arrows for whatever he met on his walks into the autumn forest. Then, something happened. He was cleaning a kill and noticed how similar the muscle, tendons, and puzzle-pieces of the gut were to what he knew of his own. He saw in that moment that he shared the transience of a body with these creatures that he hunted for fun. He buried the body and gave away all of his guns. There was no regret, no second thoughts, not a sliver of doubt. He was done. One chapter ended and another began. The new one was far more baffling than the one he left behind, and he sometimes wondered where this confusing search into the words would lead. He hunted stories now, and he was not the best at what he did. While he could track in the rotten leaf litter of Wisconsin, the trail into the words was harder to read. He grew old too soon to find what he sought, and he lost the tools he needed to capture and deliver the words he wanted to the page, his trigger finger waiting over the keypad for the next command from a mind gone dark.