Tabula Rasa

He’s normally a real house cat despite the flap we put in the back door, but it looks like he had scratched and torn at the fly screen at the front, managed to slip through. I walked the streets the last few nights calling to him, and you can hear other owners calling to their own pets, like some giant game of Marco Polo. There are a lot of flyers up around the neighbourhood - Fluffy, Duke, Sid - all plastered over each other. It seems as though Harry wasn’t the only one who’s gone. I can still see the smoke plume in the distance from the back of the house. There was an explosion at the research plant just over a week ago and thick oily smoke still oozes up from beyond the tree line. The pollution in the air gives the light an orange glow. It’s dusk and it’s quiet. Darkness begins to pool in the corners. I sit on the back porch to watch the birds, but the bird table is vacant. I watch a worm as it wrenches itself free of the earth and moves across the path, away from the woods and the smoke.