eating figs
eating ***
eating flesh

i swim through my mother's veins
and peel back layers,
distinctly feminine.

i see me.
i feel me.
i taste me.

we hold delicate
yet strong and vibrant lovers
in our mouths,
inflated candy eggs—cosmic nectar.

foolishly gazing at our sordid massacres:
flesh upon flesh
seed upon fleshy seed

visions of nightquests
sing-songing liquidly

i vanish into wormholes,
fiery transformations,
and bitter leaves,
which weep through silver pores.

feverishly, we pick apart the stems,
dropping them away.
hurry, hurry!
we're so impatient to get these figs
into our mouths.

heads crane forward
and tongues ****** first.
hands follow, fingers last.
crush down once, thrice
on earth maternal—
it's not juice, it's cream.

siddhis speculatively come forward
and burn triangle patterns behind our eyelids.
she is freed again from past recollections,
elegantly fighting off disease—cellularly—while drumming solos,
gnashing figs,
and caressing twigs with toes.

i invite you to breathe me in—
soft, solid air,
stale with anticipation
but honey-lemon sweet,
and empty besides.

we pour sweet broths into banana-leaf cups
and drink beetles out of sugarcones,
traces of ectoplasm dribbling down our chins,
violetly forgetting the echoes of
peppermint vapors,
and nourishing our bellies
with heavy, pregnant plant mothers.

i long for excess,
and i can never get enough.
besides,
it is the summer of figs,
and we cry openly
at the beads of sweat
forever forming on glassy surfaces.

i taste-touch with my fingers
and feel-taste with my tongue,
and still i feel that we aren't close enough,
so i invite it to enter me and become me,
and now
i am fig.

it's as if the cilia-seeds
and tender pink spots
expect the pressure.

it's true:
we expect this solid, gravitational pressure
and they rip off wings,
just to bathe in our nectar.

she hadn't known true ecstasy
until this violation of figs,
until her madness imploded secretly
like their demure insides,
and all she could think about
was jelly pulp and pale achenes.

so saccharine, you say,
wiping your mouth with a sticky hand,
and wiping your hand on stiff denim,
but really there's even more sweet to come later.

green-plump
violet-plump
pink-pulp
swallow

i hear it before my ears do.
i see it before my eyes do.

i swimmingly tesselate
and wade through the liquid air,
particles dissolving around me.

there's some give,
and i'm able, you see,
to be here in this palace of
pent-up pleasures and lastly,
comes stillness.

she weeps hatred from her body
so it doesn't seep
into her half-digested fig:
the fig of all figs.

caked with dried mud and chocolate,
we emerge
and fall off effortlessly
into angles of light.

dust rises like a prism
along pre-choreographed
provocations of smoke—
steps cascading for spirits of anjeer
to patter down
into our realm.

feed me, they say.
and so we do.

we break open the figs
with childish fingers,
tasting before offering
on little plates carved out of spoons,
melting coconut lashes and spidermilk
in the process.

the oven creaks quietly,
and raindrops lift gauzy veils
from drowsy eyelids
on sleepy mornings.

pulling waterwords
from unification,
fiery feelings die down
until they're just a glimmer—
a glimmer of softness,
with wet embers tantalizingly
dripping fireworks,
like childhood.

waves murmur something secret,
and the whispers only take 5,000 years
before they reach your ears,
yet you still startle and awaken,
sweat on the brow,
and glisten your way through,
splashing sloppily through
paper screens
to deliver messages.

iron tea kettles sit in dying ashes for far too long.

in my visions,
i saw ripe, bursting figs
hurtling across starlit skies,
blossoming beautifully
before dropping heavily and with sound.

and suddenly it was summer—
radiant, glowing summer—
with our skin dissolving upwards
in the golden heat,
sparkling dramatically
in the decaying light.

i wanted to pull something out of me
but the strings were tied to my organs.

slippery insides meant less danger,
so we tiptoed on grains of sand
and grains of rice,
and black beads,
and black beans,
and pearls,
and magnets.

we tripped through hours,
while minutes crawled to a close,
and sifted fine blue watersilk
until it exploded with mollusks.

i am a clam
and you are a gallon of fir tree sap,
delivered every wednesday,
to embellish our
fried and crispy things.

almond-shaped plumes and
majestic, purple heliochromes
blaze saturn rings coldly,
while the fruit falls apart—
first at the center—
and our gaze lingers on mother:
she is
dancing,
and dancing.

The early morning sun filters through the lace of the curtains,
to form delicate patterns on dewy skin
 
I watch you, taciturn, take the tessellations
and convert them into mathematics
so that we can enjoy them later as music:
light, tangible form.
 
Exactly twelve hours later, you point out to me
the star that we came from:
a pinhole light
in the soft velvet, overhead abyss.
 
'Why can't we remember anything?' I ask,
and you just smile.
I pause to give a glance fleeting
to see you look up through wet lashes
And when your dark eyes lock on mine
All I see are windows

Stop cleaning up around me
I cannot and I do not

I’ll sleep with her if you want me to
Me and fluid and machine
I’m not laughing aloud
Nina Nina Nina
Coming in but a lot of the same name
And madly

There’s a lot I can’t like
But I’ll have a better imagination window tomorrow
The ceiling flan blades tangle
And I am on a wave of symmetry
We are We are We are

Rebalancing Las Vegas
It’s a development from another evolutionist
And it’s currently alive
I’ll check back later to see if I
still love you

You visited the portable stage
How was the weather in Cancun?
Counterarguments with the same hundred girls

I noticed it anyway
I’m heading home with indebtedness
So therefore
You should at least punch me a call
I realized yesterday that
The public does not exist physically
It’s located within

Also we are photogrammetry
And strategically significant
As microbes
I’m talking in the studio
Mainly to become desensitized

Did you get that disability from extreme passion?
Or did you get that dispassion from extreme ability?
Thank you, Thank you
You’re stuck behind me now
This is another sentence and if you like anything in particular
You need me

This evening I think you actually got my hopes up
When you said everything was up and running
When I supposed what you ultimately wanted was
Everything

Did I have this “Everything” to give?

To hear you slurping everything from suspension
I think the craziest messages just talk

A trifecta of sounds

An ancient ocean

I don’t know who to speak to anymore,
but to a supposed internal being,
much more advanced,
or so I hope.

I long for days gone by and
for lemon trees in my backyard—
trees I never had while growing.

I feel.
I feel much too much, but there is
a beauty in the suffering,
a plain, openness that is inviting.

I speak to fill the spaces in my mind,
gaps which weathered time and
seashells.

Hope frantically obeys,
beckons at your call,
inches forward on a fast-moving planet
with glaciers and galaxies to call home.

Home…a funny concept.

We are all home here,
in this infinite cloth into which we are woven,
threads like stories and eras and creatures.

To blend in is a must, at first, at least.

I possess no hidden talents, yet many that they speak of.

My forehead tingles ever so casually, a signal
that I have tuned in at last.

They have been waiting for me, and I, them.

I pause, ever so delicately,
avoiding damage to the transmission.

I am loved, as are you, and
we are all sharing the same story.

Sometimes, moments of clarity
knock me off my feet,
and at other times I am drowning,
but I know how to swim.

I have been here before, as have you.

It’s so mysterious, and so big, and so…


Tenderness
Relaxation
and Forgiveness:
the key words of this lesson, this module.


I long for the space station I may have once belonged to.

There were more plants back then.

A messenger goes and snatches away
the last missing truth.

It is found in a peach pit, juicy and glistening.

The secret was inside of us all along.

The answers and the questions, too.

The balance was all there to begin with.

The truths, or truth, as we are not taught.

Two trillion years later, a blink of an eye,
if you can imagine it,
you are sitting in your aqua-garden
and floating water letters to the staff at sea—
the galactic sea, that is.

Suspended above asteroids and seaweed,
you cling to what you had lost many eons ago:
your humanity.

You have evolved into something greater,
but what you can recall of the collective human consciousness
is so stunningly beautiful,
that it temporarily blinds your inner eye.

Tears stream down your mental body.

It is so great to be here again,
connected to the past self who wrote you a letter.

An oasis awaits you.

perhaps i had it all backwards,
and we are not the more evolved spirits of animals, and animals are not the more evolved spirits of plants

perhaps we are trying to become that which a plant already is:
a converter of suffering into purity, of darkness into light

just as with each in-breath, the plant takes in my suffering
and on exhale, converts it into loving oxygen,
which we drink in hungrily, yet unknowingly,

and just as each spiraling ray of sun is synthesized into pure life energy,
relinquishing the need for consumption of another self,

perhaps we too need to become more like plants,
and not the other way around.

as aspiring plant-beings,
we too can breathe in all that is
and exhale all that is to become.

Playground.
Just the two of us.

Hyperaware of the nuances.

Guiding subtle changes in your mood with my selection of music.
I take note of the microexpressions you make involuntarily.

“Why did you want to see me today?” I grab the cold metal pole and drag my weight on it, spin around.

“I was hoping you might have some answers for me.”

So much influence
and quietness

Do I make sense?
I think not.

Even my own words don't make much sense to me.

My eyes see.
My brain analyzes, collects evidence to assure me of my existence
in this hallway,
on this grassy field,
throughout this dimension.

My steps remind me of
my weight,
my mass,
and my movements through the air,
thick with swarms of friendly and unfriendly,
magnetic creatures.

Quickly, they attach,
they swarm—the feelers,
the projectors of reality.

I sense we move backwards through time,
too many eons to count,
too many mistakes to fix,
and too many breaths taken, unwillingly.

Conscious only to the level of awareness,
but not awake enough to really see past the fog—
I see myself cluttered with thoughts of self acceptance,
material, and form, dense and crowded.

Easy to get distracted, easier still to pretend you're just sad,
easiest to fixate because we were planted
into these animal clothes,
and we just
can't
help
it.

Dense and dumb but also beautiful with flaws,
and beautiful with limited capacity,
and so tender and sweet.

You can't fault us;
I can't fault me;
so we just exist.

Trying to do better,
eyes fluttering, navigating,
swimming through creatures,
and feeling forgotten, and lonely,
and blind to the interconnected web.

So instead,
I count days
and live in boxes
and eat sweet, frozen green grapes
and days pass backwards
until I am born again.

There definitely exists within me still
a strong, insatiable desire
to create a hauntingly beautiful piece of music
for the world.

But I am clouded over with disillusionment.
I swim through the corridors of life,
aware at least conceptually,
that there is purpose in my being here,
but unable to extricate myself from the grips of sorrow,
which has quickly morphed into an ever-present,
underlying state of low-level misery.

Awareness from my previous forays into the other side—
having once before pierced the veil—
that all is as it should be,
that there is an aching beauty to absolutely everything,
that all one needs to do is accept one’s very isness,

does not save me now.

I surrender to the feeling.
I let it swallow me.

Ripe flower, succulent
Sweet nectar of emotion flows, spills out into unseen depths

Glowing comet, irradiant
An eruption of brilliant, explosive stardust

Plants and Music

Digital

Light

Vibration

Bass

Life and Growth

Divine Connection

Futuristic

Utopia

Virtual Reality

Intergalactic

You think it's great that interracial is finally accepted in the mainstream?

Wait till there is acceptance and support for interspecies.

Pushing the door open a little, I could see a figure lying in the bed parallel to me, covered by a thin blanket.

Him. Long, rectangular shafts of sunlight draped over his body.

“Are you sleeping?” I whispered across the room to him.

“I just woke up from one of those dreams that break your heart when you realize it wasn't real.” He turned over and stared at me, harsh light casting long, spider leg shadows beneath his eyes.

I stared at him for a moment, taking in his sorrowful expression. “It’s all real,” I told him. “This is a multidimensional place. Your dream is a real experience somewhere, I’m sure of it.”

This seemed to comfort him. He closed his eyes and nestled deeper into his pillow. “But I want it now,” he said.

I watched the dust glitter in the light and spiral silently, ethereally down towards him.

ectoplasmic, echoing

fibers vibrate delicately, glossily,
held with tension and
******* with pearls.

powders exploding casually from
plucked strings

she inspects, with milk fingers,
that night’s catch.

in sea-spun, spider silks,
there linger tiny ***** made of
star sand, composing tiny symphonies,
bellies dragging ‘cross cornfields,
scratching still silhouettes,
notes in Solfeggio:
ink-black eighth notes
sprawling softly on
measured bars.

the chorus of silent whispers
crescendos and crashes down,
splashing salty poolwater
on silk screen paper.

damply, she lets spools spill
from her cream fingers,
inspecting knots in which
cracked fragments of silver passages
flutter.

one is plucked abrasively,
and it melts into her *******,
threatening spillage from
finger creases like hot mercury.

one gleams and she tentatively,
reflexively presses it with her pointer,
prodding it before she is
breathed in in in in and
suctioned through.

what does this passage speak?

charming crickets
flaky knees rubbed

the reverberation of hums
explodes in little hearts,
windowpanes
smashing and shattering,
billions of glistening pieces
embedded in tiny lungs,
orbiting galactically
like bellicose comets.

a hair stands up
and she breathes in,
one huge breath.

honey coats her lungs,
quick as lavender,
and
the bluntness of her teeth
deny endlessly the soft,
glowing warmth spreading
through her veins like liquid gold.

cocoa in her breath and
dusty icicles in her lashes

it was a tremendously satisfying catch,
that night’s catch.

You stole me away,
brought me to the Bitter Blue,
where only mermaids go,
showed me the complexities of sugar-spun webs.

And when we hunched over,
squinting to better see the intricacies,
 I glimpsed your milky arachnid lashes.
 
We peeled poppy petals
and made garlands of lilies.

And when I fell into nettles,
you licked away the trichomes.

We turned up big, breathing stones,
crushed up cicadas.
 
I fell asleep in a bed of gardenias, 
and in my slumber you
spoiled me with jewels of cosmine
and told me even the radiolaria are listening.

Yesterday the sea urchins spoke to me
in their soft plant language—
that is, in that soft plant voice of theirs,
which crept up my limbs,
found my tender spots, sneaky tendrils,
and tinged my skin with violet.
 
Yesterday, too, the moon jellies touched me with their oral arms—
that is, with their blackberry-stained fingers,
which flooded my ears, settled in the cochlea,
put me in an eternal slumber. 
 
That night I had vivid dreams,
and like some girlish doe,
I fawned over the impermanence,
the fragility of "human."
 
All I could see through the thick haze
was the messy lagoon-sea of intimate emotions,
and I discovered the true algae nature
of our marbled, purple universe.
 
Languidly listening
to the lingering language of your tongue, 
half-delirious, lugubrious, mouthful,
I dreamed
that you would linger longer.
 
That your peach-sweet and honey kisses 
might become lethargic and lay low, 
lazily love me.

I found myself in a bathroom. I couldn't tell which reality was real, and when I looked down at my hands, I noticed they were translucent and disappearing quickly.
I ventured further into the dream because it felt safe, and I sprang out into the backyard at home.

Everything was so technicolor, so hyperreal and fluid. I said to myself, this is what it would have been like if everything was perfect.

I did some gymnastics on the table and ran by the pond. It was all so vivid, and the ripples on the water’s surface were luminous. I ran inside, and said to my mother, “I want go to Japan,” and she said, “We're going soon, in one week.”

Murky waters

A brilliant penny

Frozen lakes and rivers

A turtlenecked creature

Unmistakably beautiful

Slender fingers and

that hot air circulating through empty spaces between limbs,
licking sticky skin

that night air smell

golden skin and salty beads of sweat

you, a constant summertime year round

“Most people just aren’t ready yet,” he said quietly, eyes piercing.

I held his gaze for a few seconds, then dropped it to the spoon resting on the saucer. Its stem curled into an intricate spiral, like a fiddlehead.

I propped my chin on my hand and leaned slightly to the left, looking out the window.

“Maybe I’m not either… I don't even know what I’m looking for anymore. It’s like the vision gets cloudy, you know? Is familiarity the reason we long for a past that we remember to have been better than it actually was?”

He didn’t say anything for some time, his chest rising and falling with deep, deliberate breaths. Twirling his black ballpoint pen in his long fingers, he looked at me and said slowly, “You’re allowed to take as much time as you need.”

remember when you said, the world looks so beautiful?
well, i maintained that distance but my
lashes were wet with crimson
weeping, weeping for love
i tried to paint with saffron
and burst leaves with chocolate candies

this is one of those days where you sigh sweetly
with love, because the magnitude summons
earthquakes and you’ve touched the well of
stillness, but some soul threw a pebble in there,
and now its waters turbulent, no longer
reflecting back purusha, you let air expand your
lungs, collect emotions like honey and
buzz out of your mouth, a horde of bees

you succumb to its effects, blending with
self-created thought loops that wake you in the
middle of the night. what’s that about, you
wonder. you try to recall, lamely, if in your
past you were kept wake by the flickering
lamplight of your mind, jumping from your dreams
to daylight in fractions of a second.

it never feels easier, this business of love and
adoration, despite the intellect screaming to
pull yourself together. drawers open and close.
new ideas are formed, the former abandoned.
an instant of peace is bafflingly shattered
by a sudden starburst of kaleidoscopic light,
pinwheeling dangerously. what of the
tower of cards you so meticulously built?

breathing, breathing
here you are now.

falling in love has taken on a sense of
dread, and shame. if only you were still
dumb and blind, and you could love and love
with abandon, but now all these selves
housed in your consciousness have formed opinions.
is it someone external, or you who you are seeking?
the infinite? what of releasing
all desires, putting an end to suffering?

just another fork in the road. just another
pebble in the well.
he penetrates you with his eyes and
suddenly it’s all you see with eyelids shut.
one godself naked and exposed to another godself.
how furious, how delightful.

if you’re so whole and complete, why so delighted
by another’s differences? why so enchanted by
a mannerism?

baby, baby, you tell your aching heart.
an exquisite feeling
always falling in love
always, always, always, always

you want to hide yourself,
you’re older now, wiser now.
you don’t want to be found out!
a fraud – a little baby animal being
who still messily falls in love

surrender, surrender
surrender, surrender

All of the creative work is...
meaningless unless it is made with you in mind.

I’ve seen you everywhere, in all of the small spaces
and large spaces alike.

A hologram
Everything located inside of you, loud and all at once

I think of us as planets.
We circle around each other’s orbits infinitely.
We are pulled into the same story with each incarnation,
but refined more purely with each succession.

I have not, and will not glimpse the presence of our Creator in any being as intensely as in you.

After those hours spent swallowed up by your eyes, I was afraid that I would wake in the morning, and it would all have been a dream.
In fact, I am still vaguely afraid.
Do not be a mirage.

Deeply unsettling hickory
and street horn ablaze

I
play
with
words.

Pine needles seem to whisper things to one another.

A cherished moment

The dying winter

Light and the inochi, souls that go to tempered heavens

A spirit realm connected

A beautiful aura

A brightness of light emanating from
the chosen one

A blast of ethereality
In essence, a token of goodwill

When did the plants reawaken?

An awkwardly hung ear of buttercorn,
looking like a cashew fruit

Tough skin reveals a slender figure.

What was meant to be shared

Here we are, an oak field in the setting sun.

The great path

Leave behind those techniques which will
gently be overcome and redesigned.

You are essentially becoming an experience,
a catalyst for another soul's growth,
though you have not yet finished yours.

But why do we need to come here as babies
instead of just start out as adults?

In order to be placed into the earth plane,
you must enter a seed which inevitably must grow.

It is only from this early stage that one may enter.

Is it because a grown body's consciousness
would be too hard to penetrate?
I mean, why can't we just keep full grown avatars that never die?

An expendable future

So many breaths, caught up in the mystery.

Sweden.
Approaching dusk.
Thick fog.
Dark trees.
A small house in a clearing surrounded by woods.
Two figures huddled close on porch steps.
Hot drinks.

He pulls the heavy, wool sweater over his head. A cloud of vapor breath escapes his mouth.

“I like spending time here, away from the city,” he says. “All the nighttime noises from the forest; they’re magnified.”

I shift in my seat to get warmer. Bits of frozen gravel crunch under my boots.

“You only have the essentials here, you know? Sparse living.”

“I like it,” I offer in response. “Everything is placed strategically, everything cared for and put in its proper place.”

“I only have one of everything. I had to go buy extra cups and plates and stuff when you told me you were visiting.”

Silence. A deeper silence here, surrounded by the listening trees.

“Do you ever get lonely?”

“All the time,” he said, turning his head and looking into my eyes.

I returned a questioning gaze, probing, mentally asking him to clarify, but he shifted his gaze back to the woods.

“Discussing the beauty of transience with others makes that aching loneliness feel better. All that longing inside of us. Just for that brief moment, it’s like the other person can echo your own longing, fill up that empty cavern in you.”

Weak against the scorching heat today.

“I started to write again,” I offer to the silence. “It feels… good.
Like I’m getting back to something I’d misplaced or … left behind somewhere in childhood.”

“Good.”

"One can always draw fresh material from one’s surroundings.
A few things about summers:
The hot air that greets you when you step outside at night. That the atmosphere licks you."

“What else?”

“Never mind. I guess that’s the only thing.”

“I was surprised when I saw my name on a piece of paper the other day. This person with this name is me? What does that mean, really?”

I give a small laugh.

He stays quiet, examining the small white petals of a Sweet Cecily growing next to the porch. I watch his fingers peel apart the flower, drop them to the ground. I long for a cool drink.

“Terrestrial efflorescence, what does that phrase mean to you?” he suddenly asks.

Brow furrowed, I attempt a response. “Like, the supreme state any of us earthly beings could achieve?”

His mouth breaks into a grin. “Yeah exactly,” he says, nodding.

A dreamscape, a glowing reality
A breathtaking and gorgeous, dusty sunset
Golden shafts of sparkling light
Iridescent beetles floating in a pool of silver

I think I am in a dream.

Aiming, reaching, calling -- lost for hope and grieving,
weeping buttermilk butterflies weaving intricate paths
through dandelions and dandy lions.

I lost a piece of me that night, the night the slipper casually slipped off of my arched foot, softly falling away as though revealing a secret. Windows closed and opened, I breathed in cold air and stagnant air interchangeably.

Those tweed slacks, those worn and finger-pulled threads resting achingly forever on the chairback, as I awaited return of my brother who was lost at sea. Lost, but in some ways, found, as he escaped the drudgery of life that awaited him here. Glimpsing into the sleeve, I could still see the golden dragonfly I'd sewn in before his departure.

Nothing awaits you or me here, in this delicate moment of dark waiting. This chance seeks existence.

I hoped to become a believer, and I believed I would catch a glimpse this time, of some sort of cold, raw wintry scene. Descending into deep caverns inside my soul, I waited patiently.

Drought, emptiness, beauty. Such beauty.

I longed to touch you. I am waiting here, high on my self-created loveliness, pines dusting the brown carpet. When summer arrives, it will be a different scene. Feathers floating in some geometrically perfect spiral, catching iridescent angles in the last rays of sunlight before sunset.

These words can be documented as such. Meaningless shrapnel, adjusted commissaries. Tuning into the divine radio of thought patterns, like finding a complex piece of code hidden in machines. Provoking, provocatively. Spelling out sheer turmeric and penciling in calendars with a special fervor.

The feeling bloomed up -- quite literally, bloomed -- inside of me like a night-blooming cactus flower, and spilled out from my eyes as tantalizing light essence, traveled through the air, thick with swarming molecules, and hit you directly in the iris.

You were unprotected, vulnerable to my gaze, and visibly recoiled before succumbing to its honey-sweetness and shrinking into the pool of melodic experience. Having hunted for a feeling just moments before, I knew intuitively that the damage was irreversible, and cosmic webs spun you up rapidly. There it was --  a successful seizure by sight.

An embryo of desire -- they'd always warned me of detachment, and yet here I defiantly stood, elastic with desire, feeding the frenzy of alarms and nosediving singularly through a dream-like substance, known to the beings as space. Air and fire, astringent and procedural, organizing lifetimes of ambivalence, sprouting up from the River Ganges, defying our greatest expectations. What a gift, they screamed, laughs spilling and splashing, reverberating over the water's surface, culminating in a fiery energy that shook the earth I walked on.

Beatrice -- she stood there with her mouth open, drinking lazily the energy of the laughing souls. Happily fed, she returned to her place in the small crook of the great oak tree, playing coyly with her silver coils.

I painted green landscapes with my thumb, dropping crumbs from my mouth to form great mountains and breathing hot flames for movement. Smearing some blue into my unfinished painting, I caught the eye of a spoiled farmer who I'd often seen at cliff edges. He was waiting, but neither of us spoke.

Interrupted and no longer able to work, I bit off a handful of weeds from the earth and delivered it to the survivor, who held up his hands as he saw me approaching. I took his hands in my own and curled his fingers around the grass.

When he opened his fists, I had disappeared back to my spot near the river, and what glittered in his hands was a precious stone with which he could do whatever he liked.

An end to the misery, and end to the work. Oh delicate creatures, your worlds so pure and so stained.

I’d been forcing myself to assimilate in a place where I was fundamentally never going to fully belong—the cessation of assimilation came with a breath of freedom.

Each meaningful molecule.

And then my thoughts get too overwhelming and I have to stop—distract myself, even. I turn to play music, a song to cast a rope down into my long and lonely well of thought.