A child is born from pre-existing pieces of flesh, torn from the womb to tear others apart. The flesh
stays tender to the touch from the beatings of life. Bruised and bloody, the first slaughtering of skin
belongs to us. Indefinitely, with time, the slaughtering starts to arise from others.

The colors of our scars are transformative; they dance and twirl themselves into peculiar stories. But the world speaks more than it listens, and too often, scars die upon skin—unknown, untouched,
unloved.

My theory of flesh resides in the assumption that humans are most alike to sedimentary rocks.

Like children, sedimentary rocks are born from pre-existing rocks or pieces of once-living organisms. Thousands to millions of years to form crumbling rocks that will be skipped across lakes and drowned.
Scratchy soil beds hold the hard formation of the future, one we’ll never see. Worms and beetles crawl
through corpses and scurry across rocks, their feet landing and connecting my theory back to the
organism and rock.

The main difference between the two is that our flesh pretends to be strangers; rocks, however, crumble
and blend into one another, familiar always. Do strangers not crumble into blood and bones when met
with the cruelty of familiarity? Familiarity with death, not so much with living.

I am a stranger—the stranger who’s about to walk into your life. My eye is on the exit; I refuse to
memorize the color of your eyes until date three. Collecting rocks is easier because collecting stories
means trading some of mine. I speak a ton but always am misunderstood. So forgive me already if this
body of mine fails to merge with yours. Maybe one day, the beetle that eats my decomposing corpse
will eat yours, too, connecting us even in death. A pessimist first and a thinker second.

But we all know that lousy company can be fixed with good beer and two listening ears; only the
piercing pain in my ribs isn’t the liquor or your laughter but the hunger to be known. But you’re not
lousy company. You speak, and I know it’s the voice that could guide me back to religion, devoted and
yours.

The awakening came quietly the first time. There was a flash of red and curls, masked by the idea of
another stranger tumbling in and out of my story too quickly to be written about.

The awakening struck my veins like thunder the second time, and desperation poured out of me like
rain. You speak, and I know it’s the voice that sounds like home.

The worms and the beetles await my arrival; the idea of us working out has delayed me.