DE/COMPOSE

DE/COMPOSE

1.

I run past the same dead raccoon every day I am watching it rot in the time between our conversations it happens faster still I wish I could take you with me when I go out collecting miles there is so much sky here sometimes I cannot stop going and farther each time maybe to put flesh on the world outside this house where I am only in the literal sense your words do help the shrinking of me I write also to remind this could be temporary

2.

Wishing you an open heart you signed your last letter was about falling in love to be quite frank I can’t imagine it and might not even if it was simple and scripted as nature’s course of decay which I know you have experimented with did it feel right as you sense something consuming you it can still resemble fate isn’t it so strange to have all this time and nothing else the raccoon is good for keeping track though the mirrors here are untrustworthy moody and mean I am allowed to go to the grocery store now I love leaving and spending hours away as if life were really happening would I need to run to breathe and where do you go to be gone is your mother eating have you found any animals living or not

3.

Did you mean it when you said your pockets will be full of stamps from now on I question whether I am reliable a narrator when you stop writing my friend the days get longer and I am drawn taut across the raccoon is still here if you were wondering its little body lasts and lasts a foot off NY-52 the dead grass is growing back around it’s strange to read I think I just miss the world because in truth I am not missing maybe I’ve forgotten how but at least I am learning some things like pacing stamina self-control and what unadulterated time does to the body

4.

Here are the five phases fresh bloat active decay advanced decay skeletonization so the raccoon and I are both getting smaller it is worse to lose control you’d agree and I don’t instead I count steps and heartbeats neither of which roadkill have a rest finally from running and fear and being prey I wonder how this one happened quick easy or otherwise and what might pavement feel like against a body torn

EMMA EATON B’24 is not nostalgic about this.