Re:incarnation

By Sebastian Callaway

        I woke up this morning and thought I might crystalize. It began in my bellybutton. Spread beneath my breasts, my skin becoming petrified like fine wood. A crystal lattice multiplying itself exponentially in its own warmth. 

        I took myself down 47 flights of stairs, buzzed my front door open, and went to the tabac on the corner. I smoked and then smoked again. And once more for good measure. I thought about calling my father. I didn’t. I thought about leaving earthly forms. I will. Go to the bus station to take the 96. South. 

        With my half-initiated form, I walk to the sea. Small sardine roe burst from their capsules and throw themselves, webbed and networked, between my toes and fingers. Shoals of creatures, watch/recognize/welcome/fathom me. 

        Eggs
        Gate code 6734
        2.90 for acetone 
        3.90 for sequins
        20442 Sun Valley Dr 


        You have the light of them on you, I feel you (them) when I walk by, these aren’t just words. You’re almost there. You will be shucked open. 

        I need to pack my Ritalin and my vibrator. 

        With little left re: incarnation, my form entirely sharp and whole to the touch, no cell left uneaten, I let my fingers go first. I was ravished. I was relieved from my own weight as the waves lapped sweetly through me, I existed as nothing but salt, and I may now return to the sea. 

        Watch grime replace marrow 
        There is great expansion/paralysis
        Depths of atoms I can see
        What exists in steel and iron core
        Suffocating crimson, stuck in limelight between myself and yours

        Drift me back, canal to canal, wishing-washing-wishing and washing until the glistening meat falls off the bone. Visit me, my sex, write me a postcard addressed to where you imagine me to be and it will find me where I am not. 

        I feel an orb forming in my stomach, I let more water in. I brine myself, add more cells to the pile of untouched grass, crabs, sea anemones, tap water falling over checkered linoleum, sea floors which require no scrubbing. 

        Polished, steaming, my waist sits low low low
        Where can I find you again? 
        Between mantle and shell
        Can I be stitched back inside you? 
        Paracelsus found me. Crystalized.

        I started on the 16th of January, with an ionic pearl l in my right upper thigh. 
Sea water has become life:blood. Here, it doesn’t end. 

        Bundle after bundle, sweet revision, hardening, enticed. I remain shucked, fileted, bore out into holy sunlight for all to see until I am plucked, placed in your mended pocket, run through your fingers, and ingested once again.