moonlight

Having not caught a single thing all day Elmyr packs away his fishing tackle and walks behind a tree to relieve himself before the long walk home, where his wife is waiting anxiously for her fish supper. She’ll be disappointed, thinks Elmer. He takes off his hat and hangs it on the branch of an oak tree. Elmyr has always removed his hat before emptying himself. Elmyr has worn a hat ever since he first started losing his hair nearly twenty years before; the same hat for twenty years; the very hat that Elmyr has hung on the branch of the oak tree. He relieves himself, shakes off and zips up. He reaches for his hat and catches only air.

‘Where is my hat?’ says Elmyr to nobody but the tree.

He walks around the tree. No hat.

‘Where is my hat?’ he repeats.

The tree is silent. He is forced to walk home in the cold without his hat, the moonlight shining on his smooth pink head.