impossibilities

i was born in a land of rivers and trees, it has had many names and i have forgotten them all, but i will always remember the smells. 

it was a green place, full of beautiful and wretched life, where blue birds plucked wallowing worms, and deer pranced through writhing mulch. it was there that i first learned the intricacies of rot, and the beautiful resilience of bone. 

time in that place moved with the wind and the sun. the stars kept their secrets behind ancient boughs and only the mountains most treacherous paths could reveal them fully. 

on one of the star paths was a cave of heavy darkness, the kind which watches, and hides gnashing teeth. at the back of the cave was a hole in the world, and it was there i discovered the frailty of flesh. 

for nine and nine days i squeezed myself down into the guts of the world, chasing dreams of voices into the deepest dark. i sustained my body on the lives of crawling things, and my being through bargains and spite.

there came a time, i do not remember when, that the waking and dreaming worlds became indistinguishable, reality hollowed and filled with everything, and every feeling which churned through my every capacity until my existence, and the cold press of stone, were all that remained. 

then the stone let me go.

absence and gravity came next, their consequences swiftly followed. the stone met me once more, angry and unyielding. it broke me into constituent parts and flesh wept crimson as bone made its escape. agony clawed itself from my throat, and every breath brought sharper and crueler sensations. the animal in me smelled water, stubborn and driven, it dragged us towards life and damnation.

there are days i think i died in that place, and that everyplace since has been hell

i saw the world then, reflected in the pool, vast and churning and stretched across eons to ends much further than my own. i saw myself too, but a new self i did not yet know, brimming and eternal, ghastly and pale, bitter and remorseful.

from behind me, rose a mass of bubbling sound, its bursting tendrils crackling a malodorous din. blasphemies spewed from it, apian cancers which pierced my delirious form, and pollinated my soul with wicked insights and desires. it was there that i learned of the edges of life, and how to reach them, places where reality is malleable as memory.

i do not know how long this went on, an eternity at least, but it ended in quiet darkness and utter certainty before brightness stabbed at me and set my mind ablaze. parts of me i do not control moved towards survival, and i crawled, and felt my bodies reductions acutely.

i emerged, a worm, into muck and to mire, and the sky wept over my fragile form. it's waters pierced me like frigid beaks, and i crawled with every ounce of pitiful strength as my mouth filled with silt. 

with gasping breaths, i called out names i learned from the stars, and defied the murderous mud. thunder cracked and i spit blasphemies, causing lightning to flinch and to err. wolfish wind pushed me towards steep, and fatal declines, and i deflected it with motions i learned in the dream. 

the elements failed to excise my malignance, and i crawled down the mountain, then beyond, to create value from aberrant suffering.

to rend the world with impossibilities.