the rope slackening in your hand

 maybe it comes as a memory. dusk, at the fair with your father, and the late autumn air still warm. a cold front blowing in as the evening sets, a chill finger of wind that tugs at the edges of your sleeves. you two, you're walking together, faster and faster and the crowd seems endless and the fairground seems to stretch on and on and maybe you can't remember arriving in the first place, to be so far lost. you're reaching out to your father and maybe he's reaching back for you and you two are holding tightly as possible (and maybe his hands seem so big and maybe his hands seem so sweaty) and you're in a hurry though you don't know why (maybe he's afraid) and he's so much faster than you, running and running. and you slip and he keeps running and you do too so it's like you're still together, and maybe it's like neither of you are moving at all, if you can stay close to him just the same and if you don't know how far in or out you still are. maybe it's the people around you who are all the ones moving past in an endless procession. but your father keeps running, and you can feel the precise distance between the two of you, and you can feel it grow like a slipping rope slackening in your hand. and maybe you don't cry as you two drift further apart and maybe he doesn't see you get swept up in a line of people lined up so neatly and so eagerly, lined up to go inside the haunted house which you had been so afraid of last time but did not have to enter.

and you can still feel the distance between you grow and grow as he never looks back over his shoulder,  like maybe he trusts you or maybe he doesn't care or maybe he's in too much of a hurry and his mind is on other things, and as it's the queue that's moving and as it's you who's standing still as you run, you're caught up into the building as your father slips away from you. and your voice catches in your throat and you try to turn around and leave out the entrance but the line which stretches endlessly outward pushes endlessly in, the doors of the house open like a maw to accept them. (though maybe there's only a few dozen people, and maybe it's just that you can't see past their legs, though maybe you're taller than that by now, in whatever reality the memory corresponds to.)

and you, still feeling your father slipping away, attuned to his location in the mysterious way that a compass knows where north is, have no choice but to push through the house, race through the house and race out the other side, the neat little line that pours out the back door you know is there. and keep running and following your north and catching up to him. and maybe if you're brave enough and fast enough he'll turn around and never even notice that you had slipped away.

maybe you take a look back out at the sky again, though, blue with orange setting in, before licking your lips and putting your head down and stepping through the doors.

and there's straw everywhere and dust, and fake cobwebs and maybe you remember shrill laughter from another room. and there's arrows on the wooden floor in chalk, and you're hurrying and following the arrows and not looking up and your compass is spinning and you look up too late to realize that it was a maze and that you'd been tricked. and maybe there are employees dressed as monsters and hiding in the walls, and maybe there are other guests around you but in your memory you feel alone and you feel small and you feel like you'll never be more lost in your life.

and your father is there suddenly like a vision before you, though you can still feel him running further and further away, in your compass in your rope, and maybe he pulls you up in his arms and carries you to the car and you two drive home together but maybe the memory ends before that, with the thought, or maybe the knowledge, that whatever had come to rescue you, it was not your father.

but you've known fear and held its hand and talked with it the way that some are said to be able to talk with the dead, and see it all around yourself and everyone in the way that some are said to be able to see the dead. you see it in adults in their loves and lusts and their politics, and you see it in children in their breath and in their heartbeat and in their trembling hands.

and maybe you see it in yoursel