I cannot be here.

This apartment feels more and more like a cage with each passing breath. The walls of my five hundred square foot housing suddenly ripping the air out from my throat. This place is suffocating me.

Was I really meant for this? The deadlines I have to contend with on each page of the calendar start to outnumber my thoughts ten to one until a singular verb forms:

RUN

I stand from my desk, now facing the exit -my escape.

Sparing no time and taking nothing, I leave. By now a cold sweat has overtaken me in my adrenalized state.

Look left. Look right. The door. GO!

I leave the building behind; standing idle on its foundations as I take flight.

Cool evening air makes its way into my lungs in rapid breaths. I do not know where I am headed, I do not even know why. My bounding, naked feet sound like bare-knuckle blows to the face as they strike the pavement. There is a wooded park not far off in my field of view. My sights are set and my body follows. The word, run, still the only driving force pushing me; no new thoughts or feelings enter me.

Just run. Only run.

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Before I know it, the park is no longer there, but here. I make my way into the woods. There’s still enough light to see, but not enough for anyone to consider it “day.”

The pain of rushing blood and burning in my lungs shocks my system with enough sobriety that I can second guess myself.

What am I doing? The ground here is little better than bog water and you didn’t even lock the goddamned door! As my breathing gets deeper and my body takes each heartbeat to recompose itself, another verb cancels out all else.

HUNT

I can’t help but go along with the pure instinctual urging I feel from my bowels up through chest to my fingertips. Eyes dart back and forth and back again, scanning for any sign of motion that could spell some poor creature’s downfall. A rustle of leaves from the west. As the sound reaches my ear (almost before) I am there; mid-lunge, three steps from where I once was. My hand grips the torso of a robin. Before I can get my bearings as I kneel alone in the woods, the primal word returns:

FEED

I’m overtaken but something larger than myself and I sink my teeth into the still body of my kill. This tiny thing once relying on the same flow of urges as I am now spellbound. Spitting out the bones as blood drips from my chin, remorse takes me.

My mind at war with itself. Fight or flight. Feast or famine. Reason or instinct. With shirt collar now stained red beyond compare, I strip the fabric off.

Was I really meant for this? The memory of such a question takes on new meaning as I let my hands fall to the mud. Breaths become shallow as I try to recount my steps, still barely lucid.

I have to get back home, onlookers be damned, I have to pull myself together. I’ve got to- And the pull returns. The pull into my regression of self into the barbaric, the bestial.

This time, the heightened state of vigilance kicks in, but with overabundant focus. I can feel each beat of my pulse and smell the trees, the leaves, the earth, the scents carried by a stray gust of wind; all of these bearing unique notes. The world awakens to me -perhaps I’m truly awakening to it?

Just as a new source of light illumines the eye, I now “see” clearly with aroma and noise. The instinct that pushed my flesh now whispers to my soul, “Stop. End. Begin again.” my experience is beyond communication. I can only be and give in. Almost as though I must calm and surrender to my...rebirth.

I stand from the death of fallen leaves and discarded bones, now facing the greater forest -my escape.