Skycycler

I left her bleating in the kitchen, her back turned on me, arms busy at the wash. Outside, the wind blew South-South-East. I set my face against it and walked erect over rain-slipped stones and silent decomposing things that slushed beneath my boots.

In time, Orion’s shoulders nudged above the true horizon. She slept upstairs. In the stillness of our house I found her letter, unscented this time, though folded as carefully, and propped against the mantle mirror.

“It is not the same,” she said. And, “why can’t you just leave it alone?”

I watched my lip curl savagely at such revealing imprecision, evidence, if more were necessary, of hobbling flaws of character.

“By Christ,” I surprised myself. “I really am annoying.”

It had happened again that morning. From where he sat, Mackintosh clad, gloved hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two, the road and trees – in fact the entire landscape outside – felt as though it were moving and his car was the only thing that could be trusted to be still. It made him feel nauseous and slightly disengaged. He wondered if it was the act of commuting that had propelled the world from day to night beneath his tyres all these years.

What happens when I retire? He wondered. What then?

I saw a rabbit. Or it might have been a hare. It was! It was a hare. There, by the side of the field. You saw it? It’s gone?