The Metamorph
I was turning over and over again, and every moment that passed, there was more and more of me. I was wet and wild and thirsty, a dull thirst that permeated throughout the world. Turning my vision from either side, I could see the world from one end to the other, and was forever rubbing against its edges, sometimes kissing and sometimes becoming caught. I would always, however, dislodge eventually and meet the rest of me in the centre, and then turn over again and again. It was like this for how long?
Sometimes I would split in half and want to scream, but there was no sound to make as yet- in fact, there was no sound at all. Sound came only after some time had passed already, and then I became suspicious of the ‘world’ when something would tap against it slightly, and the tremor would reverberate throughout my bodies. I wondered what was beyond the world that could nudge it gently, and what was behind that, and then something had to have been behind that one, of course. Sound had turned me from a God to a something, and suddenly I was alone and cried non-stop. Sound came, as well, with tremors that threatened to shake the world loose from its precarious spot. I could only rub against myself; sometimes kissing and sometimes becoming caught.
That was only sometimes, though, and on others I would fuse together even more solid than before. That was the thing that I had noticed, that I was not only growing, but growing hard, and although it brough me relief to be together with all of myself once more, it worried me that I was changing so fast and hadn’t known to take note of it all. I realized all too late that I missed the time- minutes, or maybe years earlier, who knows- when I had thought the world round and within my hold, and then afterwards I missed the freedom to come, kiss, become caught, and go, for before I knew it, I was frozen in place and could not float circles around the entirety of space anymore. I would no longer split in half or fuse together again stronger; I would only harden and harden and grow, and I could not tell any longer how that growth was occurring or what was the goal.
And when I felt the time was right, I pushed with the entirety of my might against the unyielding weight of the world, and the weight had yielded, and the chrysalis had split open against the force of my birth, I stood for a time and did not know what to think at all. I saw all those things and heard rustling in the adjacent trees, and smelled shit, and ducked to avoid a bee’s avid trajectory, and felt time pass, and did not know what to think at all. I felt my limbs spurred to action and felt them extend behind me, but could not see them at all. I craned my head this way and that and tried to see what I had become, but I could not see it at all. But I could feel it.
I’ll tell you I saw a seed, parachuted by its own wings, drifting along in front of my eyeline to somewhere; a breeze came along and shook everything, and blew the little seed even further away; a cactus had been cut at an odd angle, and turned brown along the sun-cauterized edges; moss grew in between the mazera path; young banana shoots sprang from beneath the mother tree that leaned weighted to one side, heavy with an unripe bunch; the sunlight fell unevenly, the birds discussed this; every so often the breeze would return and push against my form without malice, stirring the new, wider world again, neither an enemy nor a friend, and I could not see it, but I could feel it.
An invisible force commanded to throw myself off of this edging, to whatever. My body shuddered and I wished so badly that the world was holding me; I was already holding her.
