tree burls and fish tumors, both knotted buds, both of growth gone sickly, both enclosed history. ever open a book with a knife? has it ever been cake with a message on it?

one time the sun (the ticklish version) set over the river and it rose underwater. it only happened once, so it’s a well kept secret told in filter-feeder folktales.

i hear their gurgling sometimes, it follows me like a scared balloon and knocks brittle craft supplies off the shelf. it once set off a carbon monoxide alarm. the gurgling can even steal my nose hairs if it gets close enough.

it’s not even fusiform. it’s more vermiform if anything…

which of my sounds haunts my mother? i know that memories line my lips like casted hooks. they clink in my storytelling. Chubbles plays with them when i whisper close to his face. we are bonded because i smell like off-brand tuna and lab fish.

i’m not alone, nor lonely, just in a lonely story. the same isn’t true for the others.

resting my coat on the burls, the river rejects the distant light. bespectacled seams of twined liters, stitching a glass pupil and pulsing cataracts. in the winter, a river spoils blindness and starves visibility.