First, I became a crocodile, amber eyes and pale green flesh, I slithered through the hot, swampy water, my mouth gaping. All around me was the swish and flow of parting water, beneath me, sulfuric orange and emerald stones; my flesh became like these stones, these fiery, slick pebbles. We scooped them up in our white, puckered fingers and poured them all across our shoulders. They tumbled and slid, down, across our collar bones, across our breasts, down the slope of our backs. And as we laid in the steaming streams, they piled up on us, great mounds across our bellies, piling up on our knees, our shoulders. We slithered and rolled, beneath the water we could hear the stones of our flesh scrape against the stones of the pond. We could hear the pond breathing, it's slick fingers reaching out to us. And we were crocodiles; we scooped up the dark red earth, the black earth, and spread it across our cheekbones, in stripes, over the ridges of our noses, we pushed it down across our shin bones, dug our fingers in, deep, and we knew we could not leave. We were crocodiles; we crawled up against the muddy, grassy shores of the pond, and snapped up at the creatures that passed by.
Do you speak the language of the crocodiles?
They sat up on the grassy slope and watched us cautiously, we could not reach them, we crawled the muddy banks and looked up at them with our yellow crocodile eyes. But slowly, we could feel a change in our flesh that was made of stones, we felt ourselves pouring back through time, coming apart at our slippery seams and folding down into our most basic chemical forms. The pond held us, spoke to us in its gurgling voice, and we receded to the shore, writhing in the slick mud, in each others crocodile limbs, and we began the slow process of devolution. Above us the trees shivered and quaked, and we melted into ourselves, into the red and black mud, into the damp green moss, into the bright stones, the soft flow of water, we became pond. We slumped back against the clay and the stones and mud and our bodies receded deep down, into sludge, into the absolute beginning. We are pond. We became mixed up with each other, bodiless, just soft and warm and wet. We can never leave. We are pond.
Do you speak the language of the crocodiles?
They sat up on the grassy slope and watched us cautiously, we could not reach them, we crawled the muddy banks and looked up at them with our yellow crocodile eyes. But slowly, we could feel a change in our flesh that was made of stones, we felt ourselves pouring back through time, coming apart at our slippery seams and folding down into our most basic chemical forms. The pond held us, spoke to us in its gurgling voice, and we receded to the shore, writhing in the slick mud, in each others crocodile limbs, and we began the slow process of devolution. Above us the trees shivered and quaked, and we melted into ourselves, into the red and black mud, into the damp green moss, into the bright stones, the soft flow of water, we became pond. We slumped back against the clay and the stones and mud and our bodies receded deep down, into sludge, into the absolute beginning. We are pond. We became mixed up with each other, bodiless, just soft and warm and wet. We can never leave. We are pond.
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