01

And within the woodlands, deep before I have never gone, lies truths and secrets that cannot be found in my current life.

I awoke to the moon’s light on my face. Around the early morning, maybe, perhaps this is why I am nudged at the early hours, all to lead up to this moment.

Sleep comes like breathing. It finally accepts me as part of itself. For now, my chest is light, and I cannot feel pain.

02

How small are you, really?

When you take a moment to look up instead of forward, take part in the primitive action of feeling small in the face of those pinpoints of light, poking, tearing into our night sky. When the breath clouds into steam, then the steam comes from the campfires, then comes from your own body. Aligned are the planets, those galactic warriors that have observed every downfall and victory - those eyes that have witnessed the construction of our home.

As the parasites tour my body, I too have become bacteria inside of the host. I too have become one of the many particles of rust that float and latch throughout the pipes of the machine. I have seen heaven and hell inside of cardboard boxes, dreams and the remains of past wars filter their way through the delivery trucks, washing up onto shore. Now, I can talk with man and shake hands. No longer am I secluded to my own world, no longer is the night sky empty.

Fortune has granted me a man of kindness to be introduced into my life. I never have met a person so infatuated with the happiness of others, to be so generous as to purchase anything for his dear friends. Excited to share his hobbies, his world, and willing to travel to the four corners of the globe just to have the chance to exist with someone.

This friendship makes me feel... certain. Grounded. A person with respect for his body and his mind, passion for community, for connection. Not just seeing someone but urging you to become yourself. This is especially impactful for someone with a body and mind that, growing up, is never seen as "enough", as "acceptable". Always needing repairs, each engine light a tattoo.

Distance is the now, and distance is what I need. That is the sign to slow down, and not lose myself in a life that I, deep down, want to achieve. At the core of it - attraction is in part what you like to see in yourself.

Now, I wait. Sniffle, cough, ache. Heal.

If I am feeling loved now, it is guaranteed that somewhere in my future I am loved again.

Daydreams on harp strings - I gently pluck them, and the song never ends.

03

Do you ever question your usefulness? In times of quiet, stillness, do your hands too generate a restless energy? The body is urged to leap from one chapter of life to the next in a rapid succession. I've begun to read the footnotes of my own story, it's all what I feared.

I fear that I am degrading. Twenty three years of rebirth, love, loss, more rebirthing of my identity. I look at my hands and I try to reach for a greater star in my galaxy that might be hiding a planet of pure creative genius. Each star explodes into cosmic oil, leading to nothing. I am launched back into a body that holds a pleasure-seeking creature, despite my wishes, I crave stimulation. Every action is movement. You cannot be lazy, laziness is a social boogieman. It is impossible to sit around and do nothing, for you are always choosing to do something. Every action is a choice towards the future - the future is the present moment.

I simply chose to overload my senses to forget... everything and everyone.

Where I lie now is the result of over two decades of stationary movement. Overload that bounces off the walls and fades into oblivion.

...I think I'm getting stupider. My words aren't as impactful, and my writing has become childish. Simplistic. My taste has outgrown my body, in a sense. Is my brain even useful to my body? Who is my brain, and who is taking control, really, if not me.

I have so much I wish to live through before my next life.

There is another being growing inside of my consciousness that's waiting to be born after I close this heavy chapter book.

Each step pulls me towards myself, each action, I touch the years ahead of me - a touch that is gentle. To treat the body with love is to feed the yous of tomorrow, and the days after that.

Even grown, we are still so small compared to the Earth, thus we will forever be its children.

Stumbling, crying, fighting, loving, laughing children.

feral happiness, domestic suffering

08.2024

Hidden in a deep thicket, the undergrowth so dense with life that it was bursting from the seams with lush bushes and berries and all other delights, the setting sun waved its last tendrils of light upon aging tree bark, acres and acres of dense trees it appears as if the woodlands expanded into forever. A fine mist washed over the dew-ridden land as it sunk into the inky blackness. Another rotation of sun to moon, another passing by of cloud formations, the forest lay as it had, subject to the bipolar nature of recent storms, droughts and other phenomena that has caused an atmosphere of tension across all the beating hearts.

Brother fox scampered around the usual moss covered logs, familiar terrain brushed up against his dark auburn fur, worn paw pads laced with ancient dirt the touch of mankind had yet to conquer. Brother fox held a foreign scent to his nose, not human, but of another animal. The scent held traces of what he associated with death and toxicity, the tang of unnatural flavors. Brother fox slunk down at a small gap between the bushes, the leaves and twigs more disgruntled looking than usual. A new pathway paved by some larger mass. His hackles raised, the scent was here, but his fox mind knew this was also the hunter’s land. That dreaded long limbed predator with his iron stick, booming shots that could wipe out acres of even the largest of creatures. The thunder clap of man’s contraptions kept the fox weary.

Keeping low to the ground, muscles tense, brother fox crept forwards through the disturbed growth, until he came upon a most unreal sight. A rusted fox trap, its once menacing hinges now secured shut in a sort of death in itself, around a much larger hind leg. The fur was matted, ridden with small insects that combed through his hide like small invaders, once trimmed fur no longer a virgin to the ferocities of all of nature’s wrath. Weather worn and tired strands of dark gray, brown patches to fill the gaps on his back and face, his body mimicking the muddy forest floor, intermingled with the fields of gray, or the color of a rainy midday sky. Flies swarmed the most infected part of the leg as brother fox peered out from the shadows. The hound’s body lay aside, as if he was lying down to sleep, but sleep would never come.

His voice felt small and hesitant against the soaked earth. The dog’s eyes, pools of honey, glazed over with exhaustion, staring into some distant patch of leaves. He was past the stages of fear. Now he simply felt defeat. “I ran and ran for my master’s kill” he gasped against the dirt. “My jaws were so close to it, I was so close to it. I could taste it’s fear.” The hound heaved, its ribcage expanding through the skin, small ridges of malnutrition. “I was doing everything right.”

Brother fox, settling his instinct to flee from those large jaws of his, sat down a small distance away from the guest. Beneath the gray and brown curls the keen eyes of the fox recognized a leather collar. “Brother hound,” the fox whispered, “where is your master?”

“Four cycles of the sun and not one of my scenes has picked up his presence.” His words were drawled, drool lazily snaked down his maw. A fly crawled to the rim of his eye, only bouncing off as the hound’s fading gaze rolled over to his spectator.

“This fate was supposed to be for you, brother fox.” He wheezed, his dark auburn fur coating an even darker look - but once not backed by vengeance, but pure sorrow. “I did everything I was asked. I was obedient. I used my body for him, I used my every living cell to serve him, to feed his children. My living form was created to be an equal contender to death. I am the hunt. He made me the hunt.”

“How alone you must be,” said brother fox, noticing how the hound’s bronze name tag reflected the evening sun, “to have a name without a family.”

“How lonely you must be,” replied brother hound, bitterly, “to be nameless in an infinite world,

I can feel myself fading. Emptying inside, getting hollow. Tell me, brother-“ his breath was laboring now. “When you felt the tip of my teeth grazing your hide, when your small heart pumped so hard for you to escape me, did you ever think about giving up?”

“In my language there is no word for giving up,” said brother fox. “I am the chase. My living form was designed to escape all of the evils that stalk me. You may be the hunt, but I am the thing that completes you. With or without a master you are just another four-legged beast that in brilliance molds to whatever the higher powers desire. You hold onto a wild heart that devours essence like the water devours land. Without the chase, brother hound, you are already dead.”

A defiant look in the glaze of his eye. The hound gave the ghost of a grin. “My master will come find me, and then I’ll find you, brother fox. You sound so sure of my death.”

“Because brother, you stopped running.”

A pause, the hound’s heavy breathing filling the air.

“He will find me.”

“I know.”

The words of brother fox rang true, but were echoed in the thunder clap of man’s arms. The trap lay barren once again, and the barks of brother hounds never graced the forest air again.

Brother fox lay in a rusted trap. His coat barely graying, yet the sands of time degraded those sly bones of his. There was no need to fight. Death arrived when he stopped running. Besides, the oncoming storm of razor teeth and trained muscle would demolish him before he could think.

Giving up wasn’t a word in his language, but brother fox finally realized that it didn’t need a word. It only needed stillness.