On Tuesday night I spotted a fox ambling along the sidewalk. I had just returned from a writing group meeting, my first in decades, where we had to write a response to a random object, and mine was this toy fox.

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I notice a fox at the end of my street, its eyes glowing in the darkness of night. Then it rounds the corner, flicking its tail.

I know this fox. It's been haunting the neighbourhood for a few months now, just after Ellen passed away. I think it knows me too, for I am always out at his time of night, walking round and round the neighborhood, walking the hours away, walking my grief, round and round, until my feet are sore.

Fox does not judge me. He has other business at hand, in the gardens and bushes and alleys of this neighborhood. When we see each other, I nod at him, and he might look at me, but our encounter lasts for only seconds, each of us parting for our own mysterious journeys, our only companion sometimes the moon.

Lately, however, I've been following Fox. Looking for the white end of his tail in a pool of streetlight. Sniffing the air for its scent. Imagining its eyes in the shadows. I look for Fox, crouching closer and closer to the ground, until I'm almost on all fours, my nose brushing the earth. Sometimes I hunt for so long, my clothes tear into strips, and my fingers are ragged from where they try to dig into the pavement.

I almost have them, I think to myself, sniffing, grinning, almost there, close to their wild being, to my own furtive freedom.

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