friskin

Reflections on a dead rat: I could be this. Pumped full of latex and formadlehyde.This could be me, with a lungs and a liver and a fluid filled body cavity. Eyes open, mouth closed. What clings to me and makes me ill for days is not the scent of death, but the ugly, yellowed scent of preservation. It gets in my hair and under my skin. I am reminded of all the words I've hated but tried to keep, and everything I have inside me and can't let go. Crunching through bone in search of some kind of ancestral heart, I wonder what she must have done to deserve such a fate, and I wonder if my own dreams could serve a better purpose if turned entirely inside out.