The seed that produced the fir standing before me is the product of my flesh and debris. I am filled with disgust and a feasible understanding, an understanding of the roots that have stretched their branches in and out of each other for generations. am I merely an extension of these branches, of this tree? There is knowledge that I have not gained access to. There could be blockages. It may very well be vanity, the broken bits of glass that I weave into my palm, fragments of ice to combat the ugly. Dare I see this bushel of dying green as ugly, as a decomposing burden, only to soon be pummeled and painted over with asphalt? I want to be covered in asphalt, I want to be the gravel that covered the Earth. only to destroy and reincarnate once more. How confusing it must be, to know and love a land so full of living organisms, bushels of green, peonies and marigolds and ephemeral biodiversity, only to see it disappear under a blanket of cold asphalt. This, I do not understand. Is it natural to feel this urge to kill, to recreate, to diminish a natural source and regenerate as a man-made creation? I return to the driver's seat of my car, barefoot, turn the key into the ignition, and ruminate the consequences of the act. I am a killer, an animal, the carbon monoxide and the hormonal imbalance and fatty acid of a cow.

The pores in the rearview mirror stare back at me. They scream for help, but I do not vouch for them. I drown them in powder instead. A matter of touch. All guilt prevails, and how it spreads. It slips away as a dewdrop, trembling, returning to the womb from which it emerged. I gently press the pedal, accelerating, as one does. I allow myself to be immersed. The trance of radio static. There, I drive. Squinting with the motion of a crane, gauging billows of fog that hover over and within the surrounding fields. Eerie, curious, proceeding with caution, which is not commonly practiced along this route. Tire skid marks scar the asphalt, the color of tar seeping into the roads, splitting the cracks and potholes. There are no other vehicles, not ahead nor behind, yet I am filled with an anxious dread that is all consuming. Nausea, nausea paints my eyelids with each blink, as it swims freely through my veins, the effect of an IV. I accelerate to 60, I breathe, and with breathing I tremble. Without control, I feel as if I'm drowning, controlling my being from the outside. I am in the passenger seat, the pedal steeper, it is freezing. I brake, skidding and swerving, the tires holding no traction. The road is wet, as is the corpse.

I pull over and press the red triangular button, a monotonous click per second, a sign of caution to fellow travelers. There is a dead fox, still, matted, covered in mud and pebbles and dry blood. With eyes shut, they are sealed with crusted blood, the color of rust on an exhaust coated in motor oil. I am filled with agony, the urge to cry and bury myself with it, to hurt myself, to push it out of the road, to take it with me. It becomes clear. There are maggots crawling over my toes, up my ankles, inching in colonies.

I shake them off before they reach the pit of my knees. Their bites are tender, timid, starved – I don't mind it. They've taken me as the animal I am. The gnawing grows louder as the clouds continue moving slow, slow, slow. I feel a tenderness over my legs, a needled kiss. I scream and kick and scrape the maggots off of me, confused. All rational sense begins to flood, and I am looking for my shoes. Where are my shoes? My socks? I see bruises of prune over my wrists, and a hand-print. Oh, it is the texture of a swollen rash over my thighs. My watch reads that it is five in-the-morning. I must, I know better. I want to run, but there is no place to feel held. Truly held. Yes, I was once held. Rolling hills and many fields of lavender and many of those that made it. Why must this fox be taken without remorse, among the others? I can only wonder how it happened. A vehicle hitting the fox, another predator pouncing. A rabbit, a lamb, a roach. Begging to be heard, I'm sure. Please don't hurt me, Please look away, Please make me invisible. I would be lying to say that I didn't share those same feelings. There is no limit to how deeply I feel remorse. Remorse is to bleed a plant dry, only to dispose of it at its most frail. Fragility, a cracked maple leaf, a wounded dove, He once called me.

I'm wearing a periwinkle nightgown, linen base. It resembles the shade of my favorite Morning Glory vine from childhood. From the early 60s, woven with intricate lace detailing. The dress, not the flower. It has pockets. Enclosed, I find keys, a coin purse, lipstick. Glue? Perhaps for an eyelash base. Very clever. I create a barrier between my hands and the fox's coat with wads of grass, fastened by said found glue. Picking the fox up, I remember everything. A rampant, ridiculing pace – I ran! I once ran. There, I hunted, I was prey, and He followed me, he did! Heightened senses, communicating through belches and screams and barks. If we should drift apart, I will not remember. This gift would evade me, it would be locked away once more. I need Him, I need him.

My arms are covered in foul blood, dried mud, grass, and the fur. I will name him Dewy. He is quite moist, after all. I carried him to my car, which should have only taken a brief moment, but I held still and wondered if this was the sign, the sign I had been asking for, a cure to my agony and loneliness. A motherless child and a childless Wife. His odor made me warm, a curious musk I once knew. I was mortified, composed of liquid pearls and slobber and the sperm-like residue of a slug. The mold at the bottom of a fruit basket, fruit flies orchestrating their final ritual of a divine, comedic feast. Oh, how they play, how I once played, how He plays. He plays with such futile air.

I saw a worm under my pillow this morning, the color of aged earwax and the texture of a styrofoam peanut. How cold it must have been, to find warmth beneath a suffocating surface; the weight of my head, my thrashing temples, strands of curly hair caressing it, cradling it as the mother I once was. The atoms connecting each dead cell; they bring warmth to this little body, this little life, this insignificant creature. Once in the womb, fermenting, an odor with the strength of steaming citric acid. The mortar and pestle over my nightstand. Stay here, please? Do not take one step further. I will be tidy, I will be good. Listen, I don't see the ears of my own. Murmurous movements and shy slivers – how simple is it to settle? The banister's paint is flushed from bleeding. It tastes of lukewarm milk, with the warmth and tenderness of cramps hugging the pelvis. A simultaneous abdomen, so loud and authoritative. To own a body is a utilitarian state.

After placing Dewy in the backseat of my car, staining the soft beige cushions, I walked back to the driver's seat. He is lifeless, cold, wretchedly sticky. I stare at the cilia of my achilles heel, their startled lines. I lay myself over the warm stones that bridge between raw and acceptable. The passion they must hold. The organs, each ventricle, the layers of aging skin. Fermentation in the flesh. Can a fiber so small feel love so grand? Such an intimate relationship between the heel, the cilia, the floor. Primitive in nature, they bond physically, romantically, the kisses they share. It turns me on. I feel a warmth and press deeper; skin to pebble, to moss, to dirt. The soil glides beneath my toenails, and we become one.

Delirious with yearning, I miss him deeply. To ache for something so unattainable, tangible only in the furthest of wish and delusion, is the form of punishment that my mind has chosen for this life. Repeatedly proven, I wonder if it more conscious than not.

Alone, maybe, is the only way to continue on. The walls close in thinner and thinner as time runs wrought and memories grow weak, fading with melancholy, for what once was and what could've been, and worse, what you think of it, too. Eurasian gypsy moth, you invasive thing – you crowd and ache, you have pushed the tower once too far. I couldn't hold it; I can't move on. Your larvae are planted inside of me, and I feel the sticky wetness of breath, a warmth struck through the umbilical cord, at every corner over every street. I'm running at 43 °C (109.4 °F) and the tears and sweat are what bring me closest to you. How long has it been? Is it different there? I talk to you in my mind, my most private affair, daily. I understand the matter as sacred. While I did walk away, your presence remains the subject of my unbinding. The most spiritual act I've mastered is holding a secret such as this one, all-consuming and restrained, though resided beneath the underbelly of guilt. I think about you more often than I let on, even to myself, even to my lover. The roots are sewn, and they know the truth; I can't bear to speak it. My corneas brim with tears and I am locked in the cupboard again, wondering if anyone will ever feel the same.

The pelvis struck towards me, rather than against the mirroring other, throughout the embrace. Five seconds, maybe thirty, the paused fraction of time became an indivisible object. It was a Saturday evening, a social day, one of laughter and company, though within our solitude, together, felt to be the only comfort that my spirit has recognized as familiar. The light pendants were warm and coated in honey, jazz echoing throughout an empty room, beaming through the mahogany tables, those anxiously waiting to be set. The tamed wood blaring, though silent, craving a structured, nurturing touch. I heard the wind pleading for company against the windowpane, while the moon alerted us of the midnight hour. Whether it had been the wine, I am unsure, but there was a halt to any sense of time, the responsibilities that compose my very life, the mundane that I have always held so dear. I had come home and felt that I could disintegrate, my soul's mission now complete. It was odd, and my lower regions grew warm, but familiar and ancient. Not an ecstatic excitement, no, more so a rite of homecoming – finding the part that had been searching for me, she who was one numbed to a life of settled silence, to get it right in this lifetime, to not waste another.

Half a life wasted and complacent, I know that it will escape me by the time that I return to your tense and conflicted embrace, as the tether penetrates louder than sound. Holding the once-was fox's corpse in my own arms, crusted and draught, the insects feast on his body and ours, together, drawn to our crevices, soaked in pheromones and the salty grit of sandpaper. Through this, we seem to become one, with no intent or control of our own. The scent of tuberose and white lilies grace us for a moment, tinged with mildew, and there I walk away, discomfort growing as I feel the warmth radiating from below my navel, an unabashed acceptance of the lust, the soles of my feet growing bruised from the cobblestone with each step. Gone, and I feel your touch, again, and again, and again. My heart cannot align, cannot engage, with the velocity in which the memory emerges with such drive and unspoken remorse. Like no other love that I may have known before, I am bound to knots of silence, bleeding barefoot over woven cotton. What my heart truly is, I do not understand, as I never have, not until forced to meet your observant, particular gaze. Anxious but comfortable, too comfortable, my guard is let down and stronger than ever before. Through the iris, foggy and hopeful, I remember all that I have not been, all that I once was, the fields of lavender blooming and alive. A tenderness, a spoken sense of trust, how I thought it was shared – how I thought that our eyes exchanged what our last embrace solidified, with the beeswax hardening within the edges of an amber glass tin, overflowing, rosebuds and calendula embellishing the soothing nature of what was created, what was made to rebirth, what is now left neglected and devoid of care. It's been decades, what feels like too many years, since. Can you hear me? I hear you at times, over the edges of a mountain 2,194 meters (7,198 feet) above sea level, from the boiling blisters nibbling, searing, at the back of my ankles, the tastebuds' jolt from cabernet's bittersweet kiss, an indulgent meal, the ability to swallow. All that you have been, with or without me, are clear now. There is no condemnation.

The silence feeds me well, alone now, with it's song and sweat.

The black salt, the backseat, and the wound that refuses to scab and heal. Freedom, perhaps, is what this is. I am holding onto the pain now, risen from the shock of your kindness. Gentle, yet more brutal than not. I wish I could be for you what you are for me, for the gift of life has been injected into me. Once more, I ask. Limerence creates a harmonious block through silence, maybe, and the yearning will save us both – perhaps, that was the purpose; anything else is too difficult to savor, to swallow.

I am what I am what I am.