If a boy in the dark were to take three steps per second forward and if there were a coil of string approximately 100 yards in length rolled in the opposite direction. If there were a shadow moving at two steps per second towards a sound. Footfall or breath. If the string were red and spun from the soft wool of his mother’s lambs, the ones who call softly at night to each other from the paddocks having been frightened by thunder. If the string were dyed in a lamb’s blood. Or if the thunder were instead wolves fanning out, belly-low in the wet grass? If there were no thunder and if there were no wolves how many more steps until the boy reaches his destination? Until lightning sparks dry tinder? Until the wolves sink their jaws around the soft throat of the weakest lamb? And what if there were no string but a wire? And if that wire were nerves? A spasm of X if you’re solving for X. Then what kind of journey is this having moved so little. Having known the wolves are in the dark. Knowing the string is too short. What then? If then?
Oliver de la Paz’s most recent book, Post Subject: A Fable, was published by the University of Akron Press. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the low-res MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
*Image: “Canis lupus, Black American Wolf. Male. 1/3 Natural size.” Courtesy of New York Public Library.
