The fog closes in. It makes the world tight, brings it right up against your window. It drifts through your yard in waves of mist. It pools like cloudy streams of milk in the valley and the hollows of the hills. Red and orange trees peek up above its tide, but it mutes their vibrancy so they are nothing more than a dream, collapsing back into the whiteness.

If you stand and listen long enough, you may hear the fog slither through the leaves.

© 2022 Katie Baker