A COLONY OF MAGGOTS BUILDING A FOX THROUGH CAREFUL EFFORT

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedi am a toddler drifting to the edge and climbing backwards out of the pool

i am a charred building revealing its stunning reinvention with a flamboyant burst of flames

i am a colony of maggots building a fox through careful effort

i am a 2013 toyota corolla bashfully inflating its hood as it releases the power pole

i am a troubling and unwelcome admission being inhaled and stored in the brain of the breather until it can be dissolved into formative experiences and disappear gently into childhood

i am a rag wiping blood onto a clean blade and the blade transfusing the blood to its new owner

i am the blue light that kisses a soul into the moth's tiny body

i am the deer leaping from the grass verge and bouncing off the front of the truck into a warm evening in the forest

i am the bubbles sinking downwards into the underwater colony until the submerged domes are full of enough air to return the shattered glass panels to their frames and the depth charge to the hold of warship on the surface, which sails away, never to be seen again

i am gathering trays and suitcases and stewardesses towards me as i fly towards the open door of the aeroplane and close the door behind me, repressurizing the cabin as i do so

i am being helped out of my deathbed

i am floating inexorably towards the safety of the pontoon

i am the serene ignorance following the gnawing dread that follows the disaster

i am the goat skeleton rehydrating slowly through warm sun and rain until my old friend the crows can come to aid in reconstruction -- until i am once again not a goat skeleton, but a goat for real, and i can leap from the valley floor to the treacherous rocks high above, and can thereafter bound from crevice to slender outcrop safely forever -- only backwards instead of forwards, permitting nothing that would have happened to happen, now until the gentle morning when i return to my mother, forever, and ever, and so on.

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