fataltoxin

Before you came I spent nights in wonder while lifting river stones from an ancient bed - Each etched with fragments of an unknown past. Pieces of myself scratched into forgotten symbols. I feared them less the more I saw ... Following their marks, I grew their constructs. A homage, a rescue; Reborn for your birth. We emerged of these waters you and I together, my son. A new wonder consumes me - How fear had ever touched the world I walk before me with you in my arms.

Voices echo from the grey fades below. Messages glide like vultures waiting rest, and hang heavy as if with knowing belly. We stand stolid and silent - staring. You and I have long since learnt to play a different game. You translate the fragments from the winds pulling feathers from each gust to write translating all I cannot hear. I should fear my deafness and disconnection But I have learnt you are a faithful scholar and accept my withered reach to kin The moment has come - and you cut your arm your blood is the ink of the truth we both understand we must swallow. For my part, I offer my arm without thought. The inevitability of ritual is beyond reproach. Death comes to us all. And we are come to death. I want to tell you of the molten iron that has punctured my chest and burned my heart. I want to tell you of my boiling panic. Although I fear I will not be able to speak- before my heart is cored to stumps of valves. I need to say all the things I never did, in all the

The warren of your streets was the map of myself when I was but a lagomorph. It's funny how quickly rolling flats, deep bush and high mountains - worlds away - pulled apart my construct. Dropping bones untethered muscle - how could I not feel my reoganising limbs, before the burrow that sculpted this malleable jigsaw became unknown and unknowable? Perhaps I will go back someday. To marvel at the passages I no longer fit; to stand outside and wonder what still calls me inside?