Just written

I once stayed in a cabin an hour or so north of Berkeley. One of those redwood things, in and of the woods. I was sitting on the couch when I heard it: a series of bangs and then nothing less than a deer poking its face against the glass front door. I felt so threatened by its innocence, so envious of its grace. Yet for a moment I felt seen, seen in a way I hadn’t been perhaps since birth, when my mother looked at me for the first time in wonder and terror. I wanted so much for Kelly to see me, really see me, to give me the gaze my mother had offered, what the deer had provided. An animal thing, really. Wordless if not soundless, a chance to be recognized. We both run toward and away from that.