I was lured off of the path this morning.

On my way to the market.

On my way to pick up eggs and milk; peaches and plums.

It was not a wolf that led me astray; smooth talked me into taking a shortcut, reappearing with eyes and ears and nose too big.

Flattery on his tongue, evisceration in his oversized toothy grin.

Claiming to be someone he wasn’t.

Changing himself from this to that.

It was instead an elephant.

Eyes closed, trunk high, reveling in the freedom and weightless the sky afforded him.

I followed this pachyderm down side streets and lanes, far away from my destination; peaches and plums left rotting on the vine as I lost the road, abandoned the car and continued my exhibition on foot.

I followed the sky and the clouds and the untethered elephant.

Followed as they remained in sight but always out of reach.

Eyes trained above me, pushing branches and reeds aside; returning to earth and my senses only when marsh water dampened my shoes and the suction of mud threatened to pull me under.

I watched as madness overtook the elephant.

Watched it morph into Ophelia; somehow afloat despite her burdens.

Watched Ophelia turn into a horse, turn into an angel, a whale, a flying squirrel; the fabled monster of the loch.

Watched as the forms converged and congealed and culminated into the profile of a man.

A man who deemed my becoming, my evolution, the finding of my final form, too slow and weighted and cumbersome to acknowledge.

I stared him in his one visible eye; demanded he meet my gaze, raged at the sky as he refused to look down; watched as he once again changed into something he was not.

I freed myself from the bog , trudged heavily towards stable ground as the charlatan of the sky mocked me and drifted further and further away.