Yesterday

It’s as if the past had taken physical form and stepped into the present to greet him: small, light-brown eyes, a tail that’s seen better days, the forepaws holding a nut they want to shake the sound from. The squirrel stares him down from a neighbour’s shedding tree while he stares at what he cannot name. Unlike other creatures he’s seen this morning, there’s no desire to take its shape and lose himself in a tighter skin, the dizziness of impending change ... He wonders how it tracked him down. What binds the space between then and now?