I stop on a hill in the outskirts of a city. Neither the city, nor its hill, are featured in Autumn by the Wayside. I rest in a patch of grass and shake one of Alice’s picks into my hand, turning it over several times and then bringing it to my mouth quickly, as an impulse.
Bitter, and understandably so.
The pick’s sisters jostle in their vial, warped from their soaking in ‘The Watery Grave’ and restless, I think, or blown by an otherworldly wind. The sun sets and the bitterness passes, giving way to the flavor of wood and a feeling of calm.
This has been a long trip- longer than I meant it to be. It has taken up time that may have been lent to better causes. I haven’t bettered the world. I have traded old burdens for new ones. I am physically less than I once was. I am, at times, mentally desolate. I often act only for the sake of acting.
Alice’s pick softens in the darkness. It wanders between the corners of my mouth, testing the air. It waits and it slowly dissolves and when I take a long, reflective breath, it leaps into the back of my throat and churns out a choking darkness that rises, in time, to blot the light from my eyes.
I see a woman in the darkness, Alice, and she holds hostage my air until I agree to a list of strangled promises- petty things that would only matter to the dead. I cough and expel a cloud of blood and splinters.
Within a week I find a bored mechanic to fasten one of the five remaining picks to the speedometer, the needle of which hasn’t moved in a year.
It moves now.
-traveler
