When it's misty outside, I can't help but go for a jog. There's something about the thickness of it, the duality, like Halloween and heaven all mixed together on a dark field, stirring up the far-away forgotten thoughts hanging in my head. I guess living on a clearcut for two months has given me a strange standard of beauty.

The crazy child was running around my head tonight, the one who grabbed my arm so hard I had bruises for a week. He was with his mother, walking like any normal child would until he burst into a full-out sprint in my direction. He latched on and wouldn't let go, eyes opened wide and intense and strong as his little hands that I was trying to pry off my arm. I couldn't take him looking at me like that. It was like he was trying desperately to tell me something but could only stare and crush my skin. The eyes-wide skincrusher boy, that's what I called him. Anyway, while I was jogging he kept popping up, not in reality but in front of that space in my thoughts, the really scary space where people's faces tend to float into view, people you miss, people you've forgotten. Through the mist he looked like Yoda, almost. Like the giant plastic Yoda head wedged under the fireplace grate in my friend's living room. I had to sleep in that room for a week, Yoda watching me, silently storing my mistakes for the future distribution of Jedi wisdom. "Throw things out the window you should not. Eat spaghetti never in white shirt dancing you will be in later, hmmm?" Yeah, something like that.

And then the face disappeared, the face that had gone from mist to skincrusher to Yoda, back to mist again. I started thinking about laundromats, and why they never play music. Would it be too much, do you think? You never know these days what will encourage the stealing of impractical pink panties. It might get too far inside, cause them to grab for anything. Them. I could so easily be them. You see, my thoughts ran like this, in and out, up and down with every bounce of my shoes. Bunnies ran by every once in a while, but they looked rather timid so I kept my distance. In all honesty, I'm a little afraid of bunnies. Always listening with those big twitchy ears, and little tails that shouldn't even really count as tails anyway.

And then your face floated into my mind, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't get it out for the rest of the jog. Your giant grinning face, smiling not because you want to be smiling, but because someone told you that people will like you better if you're always happy. I remember how you let the frown eat away at the inside of your skull while you slept next to me. I could almost hear it.

I wish you would have left me alone. I like to jog on my own terms. This time, I felt a bit like I was running away from something, like the way you ran away from that frown. I hope it catches up with you someday, not in a bad way, but in the kind of way that makes you sit down for a little while and think about the people resting quietly in the background, the crickets chirping softly that tend to fade into white noise while you move on. I hope you know enough by then to let the frown out. Then again, why should you take advice from me? I've never done a very good job of pretending that I'm wise. Yoda, however, is quite the opposite. "Eat away at you, it will. Problems fixed will not make you frown, hmmm?" Yep. That's what the Master would say. Maybe he'll pay you a little visit, as soon as he gets out from underneath the fireplace.

Then again, maybe we'll both be a little wiser by then.

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