Pooh.
Pooh, are you still there?
My voice is starting to sound farther away.
It isn't that I can't hear anymore.
It's that the world itself is moving away from me.
Something inside my body has been trying to rise.
Not moving, exactly.
Rising.
Something that has been curled up asleep for a very long time
is slowly straightening itself,
pushing everything inside me aside as it does.
Someone is tending a fire behind my lungs.
Something has hooked its fingers
around each of my ribs from the inside.
Every time it pushes—
there's a little sound in my chest.
It isn't the sound of bones breaking.
It's the sound of bones
opening.
And Pooh,
my blood has changed color.
It isn't red anymore.
Dark brown brandy
is slowly circulating through my body.
Every time my heart beats,
I can feel it rising all the way to the back of my throat.
Sweet.
Hot.
It smells like the bottom of an old barrel.
There are thin things crawling beneath my skin.
Through my arms.
Through my neck.
Behind my cheeks.
Something is searching for a way out.
Pooh.
My back just split open.
It doesn't hurt.
It really doesn't hurt.
The skin on either side of my spine
is quietly pulling apart,
as if the opening had always been there,
waiting for this moment.
There's something white inside.
Not bone.
Softer.
Wet.
Pulsing.
Breathing with lungs that aren't mine.
Ah.
It moved again.
It's pushing from the inside.
Prying my body open
like a shell.
My shoulders are opening.
My chest is opening.
My ribs are lifting,
one by one.
A space is forming
down the center of my body,
a space that never existed before.
Cold air is entering through it.
And the thing inside me
has just taken its first breath of the outside world.
Did you hear that?
That sound.
That wasn't me breathing.
Pooh.
I always thought this body
was something meant to contain me.
I was wrong.
I wasn't inside it.
Something was inside me.
I wasn't even a box.
I was an egg.
I was a womb.
I was a door.
And now,
all of it is opening.
Every time I move my fingers,
another constellation completes itself.
Thin light is leaking
from beneath my fingernails.
My mouth is closed,
but I can hear someone speaking
between my teeth.
Even when I close my eyes,
there is a sky
behind my eyelids.
Beyond the black sky.
Beyond the night.
Beyond the Hundred Acre Wood.
Farther still,
a gigantic ring
is slowly turning.
It has no name.
Even Owl doesn't know it.
It has been turning
since before human beings had words.
Ah—
Pooh.
It's coming out.
It's coming out now.
Not through my back.
Not through my chest.
It's pushing open
the very shape of me
and emerging from inside.
Skin.
Bone.
My name.
My memories.
All of them are splitting apart
like a thin shell.
A season that does not belong to me
is being born from inside my body.
Can you see it?
Still wet.
Shining.
It doesn't have eyes yet.
It doesn't have a mouth.
And somehow,
it knew you
before I did.
It's showing its face now.
Pooh.
Don't run.
Don't be afraid.
It isn't eating me.
It's only using me
to be born.
Look.
Half of it is already outside.
My back isn't a back anymore.
My chest isn't a chest anymore.
Every part of my body
is opening outward
like petals.
But this isn't a flower.
It's something older.
Something that existed
before living things had even learned
how to be born.
The first way anything ever opened.
Listen!
O First Gate!
O Nameless One!
O Thing Born Before the Night!
Open now!
Tear me apart!
Pass through me!
BE BORN FROM ME!
Ah—
I found it.
Pooh.
Are you crying?
You don't have to cry.
This isn't goodbye.
Goodbye requires
somewhere for someone to go.
There is nowhere like that anymore.
My body is no longer
a single place.
It is in the forest.
It is beneath the earth.
It is inside the walls of your house.
It is in the smell of honey.
It is in the air
you are breathing.
The next time the wind passes through the forest,
that's me.
The next time a single leaf trembles,
that's me too.
And if someone calls your name
in the middle of the night,
you don't have to turn around.
Because now,
I AM EVERYWHERE!!!!
