THE CABIN OF BODY AND BLOOD

Is my life a cautionary tale?

A reminder of a life that people tell themselves to avoid. For whatever comes out of my mouth is coated in layers of remorse and failure. 

This hidden cabin is alive, coursing with alcohol, laughter and all the other ingredients that have created modern society. For a few days I feel once again, young. Alive. A part of something not inorganic, a beating heart. Several beating hearts. 

Nobody is dead, and I wake to a fresh, invigorating silence akin to the slow buildup of an orchestra. The windows are a view that I only see in my dreams. 

I didn’t know the forest was so…quiet. Barely any movement, as if the surrounding houses were distant worlds, keeping still to not awake something. The universal code to keep the morning as it was born to be - still. 

...

Dreams rarely come to me. Falling into my own organic darkness before something inside of me nudges me awake. 

The room is an ice box, an attic separated from the heat offered throughout the rest of the cabin. Excluded and isolated, silent and cold. Corpses of insects line the windowsill, scattered across the corners of the room. Somehow, I am not bothered by these tiny remains or out of place clumps of dirt. I have accepted and embraced the exchange with nature. Dirt, disease, injury… all are part of joining back as one of the wild animals. 

I walk where the deer walk, ticks know no difference between skin and fur. Deer and man share the blood that fuels those pea-sized nightmares. We both have the keys to the house, humans have simply moved out, and visit from time to time.

...

The fascination of birds is from the disconnect between land and sky, having a medium that humans wish to harness. Combined with flavorful colors, the bird is the ultimate achievement of the human senses. The living stimulus of all things desired for. 

To evoke key senses, to be a target and something feared. 

...

And within the woodlands, deep before I have never gone, lies truths and secrets that cannot be found in my current life. 

I awoke to the moon’s light on my face. Around the early morning, maybe, perhaps this is why I am nudged at the early hours, all to lead up to this moment. 

Sleep comes like breathing. It finally accepts me as part of itself. 

For now, my chest is light, and I cannot feel pain. 

...

The wind rustles his clothes, 

The lonely soldier, 

Called many names, 

But he is alone on the gravel path

At night, the orange lights inside the cabin grow gentle, quiet, motherly. There is an air of adulthood that doesn’t get noticed until the moment is upon you, with a low voice and strong words that are strung together. 

Maturity is ripest at the darkest hour, under the stars, and between the hearts of emotional bodies. Can you feel? Can you feel anymore, sir? 

After the call where I kept screaming, where I kept begging for something to change - for myself to change, and now the adults are talking...

...

Heaven and honeywine

The pure essence of humanity 

Bring forth the first hour of dawn, the first breath against another, warmer skin 

Body to body, immense contact, two stars

I have known pleasure and pain as one, but never before have I been in the elusive position of pure ecstasy

A usual stark white, now plump with color, embraces me with the all seeing warmth 

A promise to be, to have, to want, for eternity 

I have found the holy grail of humanity

In my arms

All the same frivolous love and desire as I had brought out into the world all those years ago, 

An echo of past needs, recycled into the air and back into the Earth 

Karma, reborn

I rejoice in someone and the someones I can now call my family

No matter how far apart, we share the stars together

...

I find a tick behind my ear. A last kiss before I return to the plastic graveyard

Dressed, drowning inside a sweatshirt that didn't come from my own blood