How you become a part of the earth, and away from it.
Grab your furs and your moss. Pull them closer.

I have tried to walk near the entangled forest.
Its belly is swollen and impregnable.

Its warm tongue flicked at me. “It’s just a fever.”
Though you flail your arms dismissively
as though to ward off danger.

There is a malice in everything that whispers.

“It’s just a drop of blood,” you say.
Though it draws you out in anger.

It doesn’t mean something.
Though your eyes are prophetic, crowing for the dead.
Still.

Everything in unity.

This white morning may destroy me.
How I bend and unbend without my acquiescence.

By nightfall my eyes will be moons.
I will open for a moment
and blink out.
Swift as dust.