Been writing every day but haven’t written anything worth posting in weeks. Every web of words I seem to weave is just another pointless fever dream, unraveling the moment I step back to look at it. Maybe my brain’s dehydrated. That would make sense, considering what I’ve been doing to find water.
I won’t lie to you—what I did today was questionable at best. Questionable is generous of me actually; the thing I did when I found that puddle...It was a deep, dark, viscous thing nestled in the roots of a tree that invaded my thoughts whispering that (it shouldn’t be a tree) and (wouldn't I be so kind as to take its place.) Of course I told it absolutely not. I knew it really just wanted to strip away all of my skin and wear me like a morphsuit. I will say, it understood quite well the implications of consent because neither did it try to keep convincing me, nor did it once ask me to unzip my skin---not to keep it---just to try it out---and I knew that it really wanted to ask me to.
It cried and asked me if I would touch it, but in a "friends" way and not a "sexy" way and to me, that sounded pretty okay. Reasonable, even. Seeing little harm in it, I did it. I felt it pulse beneath my hand, like it was breathing. Then it began to cry and tell me about its abusive mother and how he could never make her proud. Normal people—--people with options—--would have walked away...nope'd the fuck out of there as soon as he started oversharing, but I just couldn't do it. I've heard lots of trees cry in my life, but never heard one cry quite like this. Plus how could I leave? The water was right there! The puddle pooling near its roots...
A normal person would have just looked for another puddle---there was sure to be one somewhere---yet I am neither normal nor blessed with alternatives. So as he told me all about the time his mother caught him masturbating when he was barely still an acorn, I drank the puddle. First, I tried filtering it through my teeth. Didn’t help. Then, I tried wringing the liquid from a handful of moss I'd taken down from Mr. Sharestoomuch's branches. I was just hoping for something cleaner. That also didn’t help. In the end, I just closed my eyes and chugged. It tasted like bumblebee humming, copper, neon colors and the act of knowing far too much.
The tree just went on the entire time, talking and talking---not even paying any attention to me at all. Half an hour later, I excused myself and said I would be back, knowing that was a lie. Then I heard the sound of running water and as I turned back to look upon the tree behind, I saw that it was making the puddle, draining a little broken branch near the base of itself. I'd drunk that thing's pee. And he'd let me do it.
Later, maybe an hour, maybe more, I threw up a pocket watch and five pennies that I'm pretty sure I would have recognized if they were ever mine. I've never swallowed a pocket watch. I've swallowed money though. A nickel the day before the toilet sucked me down...I think I might have turned it into change? In any case, I’m still here. And marginally hydrated.
Flyman saw the whole thing. I know because when I stumbled back onto my feet, he was there---standing at a distance, watching---laughing at me. He knew that I was drinking pee. I'm sure of it! I see him often on my walks, lingering on the edges of my path, shifting his weight like he wants to step closer but isn’t sure if he should. Today, he waved. A slow, deliberate lift of his many-jointed arm, fingers splayed like a cluster of wet and bendy twigs.
My heart did something stupid. I think Flyman has a thing for me. I might have something for him too. I don't want to have that.
