Real crickets outside pouring in through the window make the same sound as the fake crickets trickling out a white noise machine in the bedroom where a little boy sleeps. And his mom.
And soon enough me.

There are people who probably have opinions about my little well I dug for water I like the taste of. But none of them are here right now. So fuck ‘em.

Some of the same science that put a roof above my ancestors keeps me dry tonight. Though it isn’t presently raining. A substantial level of that atmospheric substrate remains every day and night of late, brooding in the air, loitering late into the evening and saturating the grass before morning, beneath cloudless skies, the ground grows soaked. And we stay dry. And thank God our gardens were wet. And pray it’s dry again tomorrow yet so we can go out there and measure our progress or better yet, taste it.

My chest breathes without me. I don’t ask it to. Or demand. I don’t even straighten up or stand. I curl all of myself over my rib cage and tuck in my breast plate so it stabs myself curled in and these lungs still find a way to expand, the gut shrinks beneath the diaphragm, the longer aftermath, better yet, the algebra of food passed along even further into the colon. Maybe gas comes out the other end to make room for my bad posture. Because my body knows me. Too well. Ashamed of me in public, and tired of me in private. My body might like to break up with me. But I buy it nice things and distracted it comes around and re-likens itself to me, my own self. Which is good for our health. For all of us here inside of me to get along, and be on a team.

There is no spleen in team. I keep reminding it of that.
Splenic mass. And liver as well. Do not swell. Deliver my health.
Trash collector is not the full opposite of tax collector but perhaps as close to one as two rhyming phrases may ever come. Keep heart, young brain, not you, oh hands, you keep to your own selves, and feet, stay buried in shoes and far from the nose, you’re grand, thank you so much for all your support, now into socks, now laced tight, good, now that’s done and gone.

You brain. Oh wonderful, over under full, weirdly what are you as far as organs go, you look like some deep ocean alien laid its seed in our species long ago and we just think you’re ours but you aren’t, we’re yours. And you know it. And you don’t let us know you know it. You ripply devil. You furrowed, fat tissue crown. Lightning bearing cloud. We strongly and urgently thank you for your thunder. Lesson learned. Feel free to discontinue instruction. We’re scared. We will never take lightly the word storm ever again. You pink organ, wielding a rock sharpened mind like a chipped blade cutting both ways, mind you. Mind me. All of us. Please.

We’d all like to be minded when you go swinging your sword.

You oh wonderful brain.

Imagine that.