Behold the mud reaper, down the mill racer, roots hind hither, atan, atan, ato. Mobius touched later: he will be one of my best friends. Two of us in space, indefinite succession in time; Simon is, and I. 

Vidi aquam a latere dextro our matched set, unclose this referenza like pouring into a barrel stagnant: bore through flint and punked wood to water get clean, then slurp up the scum’s little greens and slime that you’re filthier than before. Unfoldings and involutions of vegetal life: the buddingsroman of the trees.

Simon from get, and she sprouts with him: His mater and his sit sore. Barbs, their names Barb. The air they displaced is lower than the air I displace, and their breadth wider. Barb the sister will be seventeen, Barb ma’am seventeen more than that. Soft heavy bodies, two and two. Simon, his enatics, myself Mobius (I who put out shoots they were infinite).

Hello Mrs. child. When his guys sleep with his sex stir. Simon will taste: touches the signal chemicals in the still air. His guys went in and out, sick seventeen. Bodies swell, entangled sideways. He will also be sixteen, wet green, acid squeaks between the teeth. With creatures, my friends. Frat race I apart them all, I don’t stealing a friend sweet store. 

Barb another the mother, moth hair, la mére, the mare, mere, moth. She is gate-eyed, now she goes in and out. She will go into his friends and their brothers. They are men and children. Fruit that ripening engulfs its own buds, mother of thousands. At once Simon flops out of her she climbed on top of them in the same slime smell, rich earth and rotten leaves. Her honey between their teeth. She pats her pollen into sticky earth, he touched the headboard slap the wall. That too will be nothing but moist cellulose. Our seeds and many eyes. 

It just shouldn’t be done.

Simon is hateful with it. His body will flower; his sap and his rage. Fincen pieve. The form will grow immense. If you slept with his sweat whore or either; other, mother. Thick and powerful: twist, choke off, barrier, bend aside. Which coupling is it? Barb or Barb or both and boy? Interactions in high school were liquid. Social combinations of life have no forms, but adopt and give form. The people partaking will flow around him, away unseen.

Step sore tell him: stop beating on your friends it made them less fun. Leaves the size of dimes, not yet unclothing. Simon’s roots will have grasped but to her they were no thing: breather, phratrar, none her own. Nobody else will care them. She swelled and nothing push back against her. She will not feel she exists until she felt against others. He may despise me but at least he does not take me lightly. A mouth is fun, a damp hand. Sweet sere: all that is solid melts into compost.

I will be sick teen. Sour water guttates of the leaf, sticky itchy. Moth fur: too close. Blood through a throbbing stem, outlaced into placental fans. I was already born and had to breathe by myself: but these stems will creep, they have formed a uterus of earth, in which I grub blind. Mat hair rolls forward profligate life. She proliferated. Her thickening contraction yields a seed. Turned chemical nature into herself then divides herself indefinitely into others, mouth her: she is the soul that drinks.

Can’t I’m smell her not recoil. Mate mors. And I will say no. 

She had plenty others who don’t say no. Air of no wing. The chestnut trees reek of semen. I will thank her for that small thing. It’s been years Simon said Mobius.

Strange and sad. Simon the housel, he has: another Barb, a vine embarbed the sides of his house, and four sprouting Barbs like cromes about his table. As generations of leaves were the generations of thugater, tochter, touching, and touched.

Mobius smells Simon’s Barb over the airomones. He will taste her body’s imprint on surrounding nature, pendulous and dripping. She said passes through the same space he passed and he touched her residue: instinct from his time around Simon, when the air will be inked with sex. 

Mobius touched Simon touch it at the end of his table. He will touch it behind Simon’s eyes, in his muscles on his shoulders, in the tension around his hands. The odors of memory under the odors of the present. Simon no longer send teen, he becomes old, and the body that displaces air will wider now. There all is aching. He will be always: he can’t take delight or receive comfort in beautiful, peaceful, reciprocal, and fecund relations. Instead he was that canker in the melon that is called hollow heart.

Mille regretz? Mobius will have keen for Simon’s mother, but should not. He was older now than she will be back then. His drooping figs are heavier than their size, and mold filmed over their soft purple backs. That was me. My friend’s mother will do that to me.

Et Mobius immer: I am just emerging. I am buried again.

Lucian Staiano-Daniels has a PhD in military history from UCLA. His nonfiction is forthcoming from Cambridge. His fiction has appeared in The Fortnightly Review and his poetry has appeared in numerous haiku establishments.