Tomorrow is Crying for You, Much Later

            Despair rose up in me like a flash flood, so quickly that it almost reached my heart, when I heard a snuffling.  The dog who smelled like cake shuffled out from behind an overgrown bush.  “Are you real?” I asked her.  “Or are you going to disappear, too?”

            She cocked her head and bared crooked teeth at me, as if to say, does it matter?

            I dropped down to the ground next to her.  When I wrapped my arms around my knees and began to cry, she butted her head against me until I laid a hand on her back.  The setting sun was hot on my neck.  “You won’t be safe here,” I scolded her.  “You should go back into the woods, where’s it cooler.”

            But she wouldn't move. 

            Tiredly I leaned back against the damp, cold ground.  When I closed my eyes I heard some more snuffling, and then felt her fuzzy head against the palm of my hand.  We will be safe tonight, I thought to myself.  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess.   Absolute safety would never be mine to have.  It simply didn't exist.

            Eventually I fell asleep.

            For a while it was the heavy, almost painful sleep of the mentally exhausted.  Soon, however, something began to lift, and dreams began floating in, impossible to chase down at first, until finally one settled comfortably in front of me and opened up a panoramic view.

I walked through an empty, rickety house.  Finally I reached the room with the door leading outside.  It was open.  Before I could leave, however, I noticed a solitary painting on the wall.  In reds and golds and browns it depicted a wood in autumn, the leaves gently falling to the ground. 

I jumped when I heard someone behind me.