At night I leave chocolate on the bedside, cracked into small pieces. Dark, with hazelnuts; this specificity is a joy in itself. These are reserved for the mornings before class, to get me through the crossroads, away from dream, toward consciousness, rain, intermittent episodes of sunshine, random rainbows.

Leaves yellow, on a tree whose name I can't remember, but I think, nonetheless, of autumn. In the city, nature is at once subordinate and resistant.

After class, the taste of chocolate lingered on my tongue as I recalled, of all things, reading Native American folklore in my textbooks from fifth or sixth grade.

While munching on a waxy Nestle bar in my mother's garden, surrounded by suburbs for miles and miles, I would wonder, like an Eve before her Fall: what happened to that world of woods, clean rivers, raven tricksters, foxy hunters, bison so plentiful the meadows were black?

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