I had left the markers of the familiar and the comfortable behind. Following a lead that was one part instinct and one part madness, I entered the depths of the desert.
The night was illumined by stars alone. The moon was holding post in the known spaces, far behind me.
I did not understand why I appeared to myself dressed in a sharp business suit with black patent leather shoes crunching apologetically on the indifferent water-forgotten ground. Only that this was an illusion of an assumption, and if I persist into the lightless depths, even this would cease.
The night should be cold to the living, but I was uncomfortably warm. I don’t remember taking off the trench coat that my cloak had become. Just that I hung it limply over my shoulder and held it there instead of fledging out.
An absence of an unanswered echo behind me caught my attention. I turned on my toes to look behind me. The coat slid against my slacks as it caught up with my stillness.
Long I stared into the imagined past. The unknown future tugged at my oversize raven skull mask. I answered the inevitable and turned away from what might have been to face what must be.
Under the barely perceptible light of seventy-two thousand dead stars, I continued walking into the heart of what I never learned, but always knew.
I remembered the forgetting, but I have not yet remembered what was forgotten.