Daniel shoved peas up his nose until they sprouted, until they shared each other’s breath; already he knew the way a body could be a garden. How to plant it—how to submerge himself in the bath, pull the plug, how to make himself fit down the rusted pipe and out of the tub, the bathroom, the house, flushed all the way from Kansas to the sea. There his body plankton, his body the full weight of a dropped anchor, his body born adapted to the pressure of deep sea diving he’d keep sinking to depths where life has given up on the sun in favor of sulfur geysers that will not last; where everything is dark and bioluminescent. His skin can take on that hue. A sunspot, he’ll pull sulfur and water into his lungs, learning himself among all the secret and hidden things. He doesn’t yet know the barrel eye, but he knows he wants to be one, a transparent shell with optic nerves that the world would love to mistake for terrarium.
