Fog With a Direction

The fog was not blind. It had a direction: it pushed left whenever Kenzo thought of naming a stone. He noticed on the third detour, when he called a rock the door and the path vanished like a rude guest.

He apologized aloud without using names. The path returned. After that he walked by pointing: that one, the next, the one that drips. The valley seemed to tolerate gestures. It did not tolerate nouns.

At dusk he found a plank bridge and forbade himself to count it in writing. He crossed counting steps. There were forty. On the far side the steps left him, and only the feeling of having been exact remained, which is a dangerous souvenir.

He slept without unpacking the pencil. In the morning the fog had braided itself into a suggestion of a road, and the suggestion ended at a light that should not have been there.