.

This cave, made to moult in, drip accumulated hides in shade: you’ve trapped yourself in your stone-becoming — still part-game — and your dampened pelts gather.

These folds, now as hard as the garments of statues, might strike out on errands to alter strata: earthy pets that change the soil with their stern curves and varied silence.

Despite the telling scent of cemeteries after rain — countless in counted years — no one acknowledges how they flay their surroundings and wear the skins on top of their own.