Across the slime at the edges of the water, legs hauled over the other, to flight in hours two years in the swamp margin eating smaller ones, my children sit, no people sit, I have no people, look and look I say, they look this great emergence from the swamp not horror, or terror, just is and just continues, I hold each child my love above to relieve themselves the water falling to a centre, seemingly, nothing without us, or nothing with us, feel the extent my children drawing desire, I live outside myself these days in each child, regarding the insects, each carapace empty in the nettles, leaves, dry, stalks, dry, lined with dead discarded skin, in flight to breed lay eggs and fall to matter, they look, the thing with wings keeps crawling to the other side, stand still my people, I have no people, I am no person, and see the traces of effort legs against slime pulling tails containing wings into the bank, lifting themselves, the extent of which, look my children, the children of people, there must be people if I feel myself in my children, but then, if so, people are no longer people, but something else, see them rise, the vastness of their effort not just here but there and all along, the entire reach at the edge of the water alive with emergence no person sees, but there is no way to make them see, or see myself I decide, not properly no, do not force it a dream state that will not come, or something like it where magnitude and awe, we are never struck, except rare moments before my mind closes to sleep comes and the vastness draws at the innards, uplift beyond guilt, the stupor in which I lived that day becomes apparent, the potential to have lived otherwise appears outside space and time, a black hole at the centre of every galaxy spewing out experience no gravity well will capture, but my people I rarely feel as we walk, a persistent stupor, my life, not my life, my children, at this swamp, stand, look, these insects, their cycle, their uplift, their pointless insectile movement, that stupor, not stupor, just living.

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Ansgar Allen is the author of several books, including two novellas, Wretch (Schism) and The Sick List (Boiler House Press, forthcoming).

Emile Bojesen is a musician and sound artist and the author of Forms of Education, his most recent musical release is Scrape on LINE.

Image courtesy of Ansgar Allen & Emile Bojesen.