Fog

Fog

Fog comes slowly,

rolling across the streets and fields,

a quiet tide of dark

covering everything it touches,

softening the edges of houses,

trees,

the shapes of people moving through it.

I walk into it,

hands out, feeling the air thicken,

smell of wet earth and decay,

the world shrinks around me,

sounds are swallowed,

footsteps muffled,

voices distant, uncertain.

It drifts through alleyways,

hugs the corners of walls,

slips between fences and gates,

and I feel it pressing against me,

not gentle,

not cruel,

simply existing,

claiming space that is not mine.

The fog blurs the horizon,

makes the distant hills vanish,

makes the familiar strange,

I follow its movements with my eyes,

I know I will never reach the edge,

it is endless,

it folds into itself,

and I am caught inside.

I reach out to touch it,

hands pass through damp nothing,

but I feel the cold cling to my skin,

it seeps into my bones,

makes me shiver,

I am part of the slow expansion,

Fog even if it does not notice me.

It carries whispers I cannot name,

shapes of things half-remembered,

and the world feels suspended,

suspended and waiting,

as if the fog itself

is deciding when it will release me,

or if it will keep me here forever.