There is nothing.
Did the ants cart away red and black morsel by morsel? Did the coyotes drag apart the small bits of flesh and hollow wing? This body that I took from the side of the pavement, crushed between bright yellow dandelion-matted hill and jagged fence, this body I carried in cradled palms after the brief thought of premature dismemberment, this body I lay down on the damp forest floor, is gone. Disseminated into the world, disconnected from its form to form bits of other beings and places.
Dis-integrated. Integrated into nothing. Integrated into everything else.
Each night I let go of dreams of the day, letting the real work of the night take their place, the truthful side of my eyes alight with color and motion. I stand at the periphery of whom I once was, marveling at the pieces floating and bumping together, swinging in wide arcs, ricocheting apart. I lift my arms to gather these fragments but they dissolve and disappear through fingers aching to cradle what they cannot hold. The parts become so small and rearrange themselves in such a way that I cannot see them with my eyes, I can only swim through the bright white of memory and possibility.
Re-formed, re-integrated moment by moment, in this space and now. The puzzle pieces re-modeled, molded into the present. My wings re-membered in the flash of old man’s smile. The flesh of my yesterday’s being re-directing the subtle motion of a stream. My liminal thoughts re-appearing as an elephant on the page of a child’s notebook.
I stop searching through the ferns for a glimpse of feather and beak. I empty my hands of yellow flowers, I breathe in the pine and moss. I step into the song of the birds, the dance of the clouds, the gliding stillness of my fingers against the air. Integrated into it all, the boundaries fall away and I walk further into this all encompassing self called world.
