Invisible to the eye.

Windy, dark, silent, prowling, the beat dropped and his voice scratched in and I surprised myself, even, at how quickly the melody transported me to another place. Another time. It was snowing out, cold, and the wind shuddered against panes of glass -- the weakest point in our fortress against the outside world. A scent, me laughing, and the always pressing forward, always crushing momentum of the clock. My descent down the rabbit hole this time was sharp and sudden, and painful when I thought it couldn't hurt me anymore. My heart beat at all the wrong speeds, and my fingertips went cold, then numb. I wavered on the border between wanting to be sucked back down to languish in the regret, and feeling around in my pockets for a match and some accelerant to just be done with it all. But there were no answers at the crossing.

The wind kicked up and as I drove my figure eights, the melody still pressing down, I looked up and watched the largest size of balance ball one can purchase roll calmly down the main intersection of town. I reached up, turned off the radio, and the memories, set alight every blue and white flashing strobe that I could finger, and parked my car. In the darkness of the pre-dawn I beat the hell out of the balance ball until I felt that, were someone watching, they had probably gone from thinking that perhaps they should ask if I was okay, into shutting the blinds and sequestering the children away into the basement until the danger had passed.

And I wondered, if it was Grandpa Z or J who put that giant, ungainly turquoise piece of inflated rubber in the street. Or maybe it took both of their cunning to come up with such an effective way of putting me back in my place.

I corralled the ball, a sort of suburban tumbleweed, in the corner of an empty bus stop shelter. I climbed back into the driver's seat and switched off all of the dancing lights, pedal to floor, resuming my figure eights. The streets led me down the hill and to the lake and I turned off the car and all of its noise, and sat at the edge of the water so that the bottoms of my boots stood on top of the whitecaps when they broke. Strong wind, big waves. A freighter clung to the edge of the world, with Orion keeping a steady watch lest it slip off into oblivion.

I sat there until the freighter had slipped away and the bottoms of my pant legs were soaked. I thought about the fox, and his lesson that you are responsible for what you have tamed, and how we so carelessly try to tame whatever enters our gravity. With no plan, or empathy, or love even. We cast big nets, and discard whatever was caught by happenstance. I wondered, in my self-deprecating way, if the rose had survived his absence, and I hoped in my childish heart that she had. I watched the lake froth and churn, and I vowed to myself that I would be careful about what I tried to tame, and that I, myself, would stay wild from now on.

And it was a lonely decision. But, I have found, the good ones usually are.