—you’re a fungus expanding your fibrous tendrils across dead skin and decaying organs; sing in the language of hunger, the words an ancestral memory buried in the genetic code, take sustenance from the once-you, recall slivers of “before”, slices of laughter beneath a blue sky, the nuzzle of wind and water cleansing the heat of summer, the grass cushioning naked feet, the moments stretching further between the last breath and the next, the stutters in the heart choking the bloodstream—
—the once-you is absorbed in the topsoil, feeding the roots of grasses and trees, the worms and insects excavating your dirt-flesh, carving the pathway of generations; a shout from the segmented gods of the lumbricidae airbrush directions to the promised food-land, their hermaphrodite clans explore your body, searching, eating, swelling, as you converse in the language of gravel teeth grating against bone, their open mouths taking you in—
—you hear the rumble plummet from the below-ground sky, the world rattles above, shovel-steel grinds against rock, breaks you through the crust, sunlight suckling moisture from your segmented skin hooked with barbed pain, and you’re thrust through the outer universe before the wind of motion swings your head and tail against titanium, puncturing the skin of the wet as a new world pushes against your body; hungry currents vibrate around you, encircle you, slaver over you, one comes closer, slow at first then hurtled agony—
—the hook wound in your mouth paints the world; weep in the language of sonar, sound waves strained through a thick atmosphere, hunt instincts paved by generations, feel them, the small ones, the microbes feasting in your wound, as your energy sags, flows with the trail behind you, you need some rest, sleep… just one nap—
—the past-you disintegrates into molecules, hydrogen welds to oxygen, a rebirth into the now-you; rejoice, stretch your fingers to the brightness, the warmth pouring through as you join in the hymn, the language of lunar wings tugging on the tide, and the heavinesses of past-yous melt, drip from your back, leap, face sunward as you ascend, your body breaks away, the hydrogens divorce the oxygen, drift to a distant star—
—you’re an army of black and grey, a trillion voices war-chanting in the language of electricity; the word is given, bombardiers punch the button, trapdoors swivel on hinges, you fall, your aim general during the first thousand feet, the wind scrapes against you, flicks particles from your skin, you locate your target in the soft dirt of the patchwork garden, the corn, the peppers, the squash, the berries, the—
—the new-yous lay in the sun, ingest the once-you, commune with your neighbours in the language of roots, get drunk on sunlight, and a hand curls around your body, carves you from you from the earth; plead to the gods of photosynthesis as a knife digs into your pericarp, scatters gelled blood and seeds across the counter, lie on the plate, wait to be sacrificed, swallowed into the next-you—
Nathan Tompkins is a Hard of Hearing writer living northwest of Portland. His work has been published in many magazines and anthologies including Maudlin House, The Inflectionist Review, and Letters For the End Times.