if I were born a different species I would wish to be hatched a bird from an egg in a nest devouring vomitus looking over the branches at the fall watching my mother leave watching her come back seeing my brother leave and not return watching my mother leave with my siblings watching my mother return with my siblings the big day the big leap of faith the rite of passage or descension a terrible pressure much gravitas the jump!     born into a new life once passive now released a terror upon the skies or at least the rodents of the field which briefly leave their burrows to bask in the sun of the dawn but also a member of a lethal hierarchy always watching for bigger predators with beaks the size of my neck and shadows to encompass me and blot out the sun above me and swooping down upon me and me wheeling and barreling and careening and them tightening and circling and diving in a battle of athleticism for which the trophy is life or death then more vacating of the space between I and them and endlessly the pulse-driving innervating rush of imminent death surges

but I am descendant of apes, cultured to sit in desks and combine numeric symbols for collectives concerned primarily with the collection of monetary symbols and should I want any of my own significant symbols which indeed I likely should I must push harder the boundaries of my capability to mix accurately these and other symbols past that of my fellows and restrict my wonderment to evenings in which I either live through the fantasies of the television program or novella or expressive form or imbibe the socially acceptable intoxicants in socially acceptable groupings of my peers which within are also imbibers of aforementioned substances in non-lethal but rather questionable binges on and evermore and on some more until I have children and I too teach them the ways of our rigorously well co-ordinated society which is very proper very proper indeed with its unspoken rules profiting you greatly to follow oh profit so greatly oh great profit jolly good great investments great show wonderfully valuable just barmy the bees knees the cats pyjamas the dogs bone oh dear merciful god does samantha really love me is my marriage based purely and hollowly on some ingrained self-deprecating pragmatist ritualism

I will die someday and I both fear for it and desire it with exactly half each of my whole being