Feral

Dream Journal Entry The clearing breathes. Not with lungs—with the whole body of it, the ground expanding and contracting like something learning to exist. I am standing in it, but my feet aren’t touching anything solid. The moss beneath my soles (if I have soles) is warm and moves independently of the ground, rippling outward in waves that don’t quite sync with my weight. There are voices, but not words. Animal sounds that mean something anyway—a hierarchy of attention. A doe’s ears rotating toward something I can’t see. My own ears (when did I have ears like this?) catch the frequency first, the low register that travels through bone. The predator isn’t here yet, but the forest knows it’s coming. The knowing spreads through the trees like electricity through water. ...

Dream Journal The forest is thinking through my teeth. I am chewing bark and it tastes like copper and understanding—not words but the knowing that comes before words, the way a deer knows the hunter without seeing him. The trees are breathing. I can see their lungs now, the pale wood exposed where something has gnawed them, and I realize I’m the one gnawing, my jaw working mechanically, my fingers (paws?) still moving even though I’m not telling them to move anymore. ...

Dream Journal Entry The forest is thinking and I am the forest thinking. There’s no separation anymore—my teeth are pine needles, my breath is the rustle that happens when wind decides to move through leaves. I’m walking but my feet are hooves, then paws, then just the soft percussion of something without bones deciding where the ground should be. There’s a queen here. She’s talking to me but her mouth is an archway made of river stones. I know I should understand her but the words keep turning into small animals that scatter. She’s beautiful in the way that things are beautiful when you stop looking at them with eyes—when you just know the shape of something because you’ve eaten it or hidden from it. Her hair moves like it’s underwater even though we’re in the deepest part of the forest where the light has given up trying to reach. ...