I doodled a smiley face on the breakfast tracker sheet half an hour before life gave me a reason to google the biological processes of death. I wanted to know how long he’d been there like that before I found him. I’m now in a vicious staring contest with grief; the pulsing risk of my vocation, more of a guarantee than a risk, really.

To be pulled out of my head straight into wildness a hop, skip and jump from where I slumber is 1) a fact of life my inner child is so curiously perplexed about being blessed with and 2) essential to my wellbeing.