phases

fraying: your arms and body jerk, the skin around your eyes turns pink.

softening: the pink moves off quick as a sunset and your arms go still, your eyes are blue glass, you stare, your breath is even for a moment or three.

then the great surge: the time for crossing's coming, you must be ready, you must fill your belly and your mouth and your cells so you suck and suck and suck the world's food in. 

the thrashing: it's not enough, it's too much. just as you are preparing you are already gone, caught out there in the open with nothing, and as you find yourself there you are here preparing too heavy a load, struggling it out to where you are already caught, in the open, with nothing.

the surface: it is just a bedroom, just a bed, and a mother holding you in a small suburban dark. open your eyes, awake as ever; see it is so and close them.

elsewhere: a lake appears after a desert's brief rain. the living know. flock follows flock and herd follows herd in arriving, partaking, lifting away in sheets