You love the soil against your skin. You love the water against your skin, the forest a kind of bliss. Or perhaps it is only that the salamander loves these things. Does it matter? The places covered in comforting dead leaves. The loam and the lichen, the earthworms and the snails, the mushrooms and the mold. Fungi like lampposts or markers illuminating the world. When you write in the journal, it feels like your skin is open to the messages it sends out, the messages you embed there. How these places, too, are tidal pools, the forest an island amid devastation.

The glow, at night, of fireflies and, overhead, the canopy and the moon and, even, you imagine, a fox staring down at you, framed by leaves and dark branches. The face of a fox impassive, remote, centuries away. So far away. As far away as the moon.

Later. You fell asleep or fell awake. In the night, deep into it, so little difference, so little defense. But the forest now is full of light. Waves of red flickering light in a rough line, and a figure, distant, at the center of the line. Coming closer and closer across the shadows of tree trunks. No difference between flame and figure, as if the figure is made of light and holding out infinite arms of fire. But there is no smell of burning. But there is no crackling or hissing sound. Just the muffled sound of someone walking over damp leaves and branches.

Your mother. From your shelter, peering over a fallen log, you see that the figure is your mother. A burning flame, setting fire to the forest with the fury and derangement of her passage. Reaching out with blackened hands, the flame now wings to her sides. Beseeching. Imploring. You can hear her now, above the silence of the flames. Calling out your name. Asking you to help, to stop the pain. To stop hiding.

What’s the present but a version of the past. You piss yourself with fear. Your heartbeat pulses strong in your ears as if the pressure has dropped. Pass out. Recover. Come to your senses, lurching onto your stomach, still hidden. But not for long. She is near. She is so close.

The fine-etched features of your mother’s face, so locked in. As if set on a course for too many years, and even though the destination never appeared, still she must continue toward it, through a field of flame. Must find her daughter. To explain? To inflict? But that is only your fear rising again.

The fire is hypnotic. The fire calls your name, too. Fire and mother both. You cannot run. You cannot reveal yourself.

Until your mother stands on the lip of your shelter and stares down at you, her green velvet nightgown on fire and her eyes like raging candles.