Morgan Krähe

~ "Hello, my diary." "My father is fifty, but the woods make him seem older, like he belongs to something that’s been standing far longer than either of us. We live at the edge of town in Oregon, where the last streetlight flickers and the trees begin. He spends more time beneath those trees than anywhere else. He knows the trails that don’t appear on maps. He talks about strange lights seen between the firs, about heavy footsteps in the dark that leave no clear tracks, about old logging camps that were abandoned for reasons no one quite explains. He never says he believes the stories, only that the forest doesn’t give up its secrets easily. Sometimes, when he comes home late and quiet, boots damp with moss and rain, I wonder if the woods are telling him things they don’t tell anyone else."