The length of me lived in two places. It stayed over there, stretched and gradually quartered, the town square pollinated by its melancholy discharge; buried, each severed part a type of herb — overgrown and unruly, dispelled from the rituals that suckled it.

It followed me here, and I was unable to shake it in the wading pools constructed for recreation, trans- figuration, and the egg laying of midges. It turned in these shallows, rotating like spitted game: fast enough to observe meteorological difference, too slow to damage the heather.

When you add the two together there is only regret for the doubled dens half-used; there is not enough meat to cover so many years; much easier to subtract, form the null in which it can be observed without distraction.