I think he watched his eyeball disappear. In death and detachment the taut, thin skin begins to leak, thus flatten, sink, down into itself, irising lenslike until the screen goes dark and he cannot see anymore. The scientists will say the eyeball went somewhere; I cannot help but hate them for it. He cried, “My eye has fallen empty! My eye has died and soaked the dirt not with tears but with the wet of its skin! Oh, may the worms see clearly now in light!”
I cannot remember how I spoke back. His words floated, fell, folded in lenslike, or eyelike.
I think turtles like it when I cry. I can see their eyes poking just past their shellridges, heads like kindhearted double-sized cashews. The turtle watching me now has a stripe stretching front-left to back-right, like a racecar confused. Stripey, I will call her. Stripey watches with a grin as my tears land soft on the arm above or below the fingers I use to wipe my running nose. Perhaps the smirk is sympathetic; turtles emote unlike you and I, and you unlike I, for I unlike anyone I can remember. The tears fall in bushels, as if my tear ducts are hoses and God or my mind or Determinism keep shifting the settings, and thus create many brief pauses when the hose must decide how next to release its cyphered blood. I think my fish died. They laid in tanks facing each other at the pet store, before I bought Johan and left Stripey caged. She is not a bird, so she cannot sing her sorrows skyward. So she smiles, it seems, at least with satisfaction.
I think I gave this letter to a worm. He curled up around it, wriggled and slithered forward and back, then laid his lithe weight upon the formerly fire-lit wax. Perhaps he could still feel the flames and wished his belly licked lengthwise (as otherwise would not function). Perhaps he thought he could read the indents of my seal, in case it had my name (worms, despite their faceless state, are nosy creatures). Perhaps he believed this seal the key to me, and thus sunk himself and the letter beneath the loam. Grass and sadness crumbled atop like cilantro and salt. I cannot remember what I wrote; you would have to ask him.
I think I slithered through the grass like a narrow fellow, too cool for corn. My arms and legs limply scurried newtlike, but could not regrow. I wondered if the grass would recover from my weight, from my many toes and fingers pressing down upon their lower backs until each blade was paralyzed. It must be funny; only then could they cut my skin. I had not forethought that my creeping along the forest wall may leave my chest slathered in slits, each divine and finger-width but nonetheless distraught. Learning is cool, but I am tired. The birds shriek ghoullike. I think their necks must be hole-struck, for the air flying through their windpipes appears constant, ceaseless, endlessly shrieking like a now-blown nail-crafted whistle scraping against a chalkboard. The grass shimmers to its pitch; the sun stretches to the grass; my eyes eat the sun, then gush with magma; I faint upwards into a locked-knee erection and the magma floods into every slit like whispers into ears, except instead of insidiously becoming infiltrated my body simply bursts like an engorged louse. I am dizzy. I need water, just a gulp.
