There is a popular story in human books passed around mostly at this time; right before the snows truly fall and the dead of winter begins. It is an odd story. It is of a man portrayed as miserly for being ambitious. For being concerned with his own survival. For being greedy with his life. I do naut understand why these things are looked upon as unwanted. Look to nature, where the woodpecker will invade the nest of another bird. See, there, as it drills its beak into the living chicks skull, devouring the brain as it still calls for its mother. The woodpecker does naut see it as slaughter. It sees it as survival. Something buried within that skull ensures the woodpecker will live on: be it nutrient or simple sustenance. The chick was weak. The woodpecker was not.

That very same bird will land in some tree, pecking at the suet someone has hung behind their hovel; and they will coo and sing to the bird, not knowing -- not caring -- of what it has devoured moments before. There is no shame in surviving in nature. There is only what is, what will be, and what must be.

In this story, this man is haunted by three.

That...That I do understand, this haunting. Though mine are not the mulling, pitiful creatures which haunt this ridiculously named human. (What name is a "Scrooge"? It sounds like something I have shat.) I understand being preyed upon by the past for I am the past. I understand not letting go. I see it. I see faces. Faces that no longer exist and never will. Faces that made promises as easily as they made water to piss with. I see them.
I do naut want to see them.
I wish to be blind.

There is no shame in me for what has passed. But there is a thing that sticks as if I swallowed burrs, taut and heated below the source of my voice, knotted tightly above collar bones. Sometimes it tastes as my own blood. Sometimes it tastes as salt. Sometimes, it tastes as dust from rotten books. This thing I do naut name. But I wish to be blind of it. I wish to be cut of it to gnash and tear and spit upon it. I wish to be rid of it, this haunting.

This--
Regret.

GILGAMESH ROLLED A ROCK WITHOUT ANY COLORS IN FINGERS LONG AS CHURCH SERMONS.
No pieces twinkled in his jagged shard, no shimmer in it at all?flat as dead little rats eyes.
The rock and the fingers and his very great weariness in silence,
creepy-clacked to the end of my big toe.
Enkidu sings quietly from a wrinkled tree with bark as gray as the rocks.
Only the very tips of them are leafed-green. Even the sky is hushed,
humming along with Enkidu?s dirge by sending a robin to mumble-warble.
They both wear feathers and I watch them oily-gleam in the sun.
?I had a door. And on that door was my life,? he tells me.
He counts my toes with his eerie fingertips, I cannot say if he is more bird or more man.
?I do not think it was wise of me. Doors remain closed and
lives in stone don?t really breathe.?
I nod carefully, as if I know the delicate things that immortals weave.
As if I knew the gates of Uruk and all the deeds of my life, carved therein.

? Suliss'urn's player