Leave No Trace

She can’t discern the deer from the woods, but she can feel branches scratch the way some people feel cold while watching snow scenes in movies. She hears the crack and snap of underbrush, such reckless abandon on careful feet. The deer leaves her as all things, people do, and she slides poles into grommets and feels a lonely stillness, knowing people don’t come back and that, she thinks, isn’t grief, but waiting. The taut tent takes her in, holds her safe from, and so close to, the godforsaken earth, even with the sleeping pad, she can feel its pull.