The things I have learned but do not understand

1. You can make things grow in any way you want.

2. I only feel things liminally like your skin as we swim in the pond, so soft and ridged when I am about to leave. Only in transitions from day self to night, from dry to wet, above ground to underwater. We leave the dirt to the garden, the fleeting glances and the ripening cucumbers to the sun and the lawn.

3. They'll peck you to death if you're different.

4. Water is where worlds collide and I should have known this already. It's mythological and from it anything can arise as soft and cloudy as the muck that stains my toenails or the scum left in the strings of your hair. A gateway to my ghostly body, a beloved unknown universe.

5. People always think I'm older than I am but younger than I look.

6. Seduction is easy when you don't care.

7. You can make things grow in any way you want, whether you are tying stems to stakes with strings or shading them from the ballasted sun, whether you are spilling them your secrets or lying about your age and where you're from.


8. They'll peck you until you have curled up a small Faid in a ball with a bare neck and a shaved head and you will wait with your wings folded beneath you for someone to chase them away, for them to find and hold you for a short while.

9. The exhilarating fear of a cold shower applies an ease to my walk and give to my skin and a small cold knot in my breast.

10. If you write down and plan all your voicemails in case you have to leave them it may be a sign of disordered eating. If you empty the compost wrong and your chickens start pecking at their own eggs, it might be a sign of social anxiety. If you shave your head and you find gray hairs, it could be a sign of cervical cancer.

11. You can make things grow in any way you want but you live an ephemeral life and when you leave this backcountry field no one will remember your name and especially not where you're from or where you went or what you want.