In A Dark Wood

March 23

How do we look at the trans-human perspective, when most of us are in a more human world than ever before … What happens if we start from the perspective of speaking with the world?

– Paul Kingsnorth

The dead are below me. I smell them. Acid. Mineral. Crystal flake. Sliding through the fungal gut.

Green is the scent of my skin. The clouds pass over, thoughts in the mind of the world, drop rain, water hammer.

I am being eaten alive. I am being eaten away.

My heart is still safe. My heart is grey black. My hard heart is the smell of a grey cloud made still.

Dark in this wood, cool. The cold roots eating the dead beneath me. Far below, somewhere, is home. Heat. Here, now, only the wan sun.

The clouds pass over and over, their size, expanse. They remind me of something. A feeling.

These trees like fruiting fungus furious for the light, these are small. Small, small, small as the hairs of lichen.

In my gut is the heat of the earth. It smells white. Over me lay the snows, the pads of glaciers rasp my skin. The waters are tearing me down. I am the size of clouds, I am above. I am hard. I am being eaten but only slowly. I am forever.

That was a dream. I am not that. The trees are great, I small. Lying here. The dead and the muck beneath me. The heat far away. Lichen blooms over me, inscribes a heartbeat on my pelt. There is the green of death in my fissures, working toward my heart.

The rain comes, clawing at me. I destroy each drop with hardness, turn it to a rivulet.