My anxiety, a thread hooked to a splinter on the broad side of a forgotten barn, where I was once too afraid to approach, in a forest clearing, down a wooded path overgrown with grass and lined with ancient broken farm equipment rusting in the dampness of the moss-carpeted undergrowth.
I am there near sundown. The path and twisted steel at my back. A memory of a childhood not long past, never long past; of a fear of not knowing what’s behind those broken doors, behind those splintered walls. Always a fear: never curious, never brave, never sure, always afraid. Silently, I creep towards the barn in the stillness. Nothing moves, and yet, there, on the wall, hooked to a splinter, a thread hanging, quivering slightly in the heat. A moment passes, a mere memory. In the silent stifling still air the thread takes flight, gliding upon unseen, unfelt and unfeeling currents, until it vanishes, out of sight.
