The Hunter Remembers

Envoi:

Now the trail ends and its silence begins,

and my breath and my blood all whisper your name.

The hunt is over; what remains is my shadow, unmade.

VI

I whispered to the dark to mark the trail,

but it whispered back in my own breath.

The forest held its breath when I spoke your name,

and answered with a hush that fed the silence.

My hands remember how to draw for blood,

how to make the bowstring hum against the shadow.

V

Once, I thought the trick was in the shadow,

that shape of promise curling from the trail

but every answer whispered out in blood.

Each step was prayer disguised as breath,

and I spoke it softly, begging the trees: remember my name.

They never did. Their roots hold only silence.

IV

I built shrines where the deer held silence,

marked by the tremor of its passing shadow.

I etched on bark the letters of my name,

believing the forest would repay the trail.

But the earth drinks names the way it drinks breath,

what's left is the taste of iron and blood.

III

The scent of rain unthreads the old blood.

The leaves grow heavy with that silence.

I draw an arrow just to steady my breath,

watching the mist curl around the shadow.

Somewhere ahead, the path becomes the trail,

and the trail wears the sound of my name.

II

If I speak now, it is to my own name,

to the hollow bones that once held blood.

I kneel beside the memory of a trail

and feel the ache return as silence.

I am what remains of the shadow,

a body chasing the ghost of breath.

I

Once, there was only the clean rush of breath,

Before hunger learned the taste of my name.

Before the first step bent the world toward shadow.

Before the heart beat itself into blood.

Before the forest echoed with silence.

Before I took to the trail.