Sifting and Rebuilding from Sensory Collage

Yeah, I said it.

If I wasn’t a naked mole without claws who dislikes extreme heat and ticks I’d probably live in a handsome log. 

I know that the happiest I have been is when the lines of inside and outside of the boundaries of the house are blurred. Dirty hands, bare feet, eating vegetables with and without my hands, sand in my sheets, windows open, dogs on the couch, venison jerky hanging, giant zucchini, giant snowflakes, giant raindrops that drum clouds of army green smoke out of puffball mushrooms, rattlesnake rattles, shells, arrowheads, obsidian slivers, cropping peas off the vine hands-free like a pony, huckleberries, tree pitch on my hands, sleeping in the yard, picking scabs, eating ants, bee stings, pooping in some leaves, pretending I’m as graceful as a muskrat in the pond, swimming, trying not to wiggle the lines of my wake behind me, brushing milkweed floss against my neck, setting blossoms on the shelf of a fungus jutting out from the bark of some two hundred year old tree, razor sharp rodent’s bones, the dangling legs of cranes, singing, scary singing, goats let loose in the dining room crowding up toward the ceiling on the china cabinet bumping the chandelier, seeing birds fly like they are hurt on purpose, drinking out of nasturtiums, melon juice stains, wearing moss beards, catching frogs, gently returning safety orange salamanders to their soft, rotting log fragments, birch bark left like a sheet of clean paper on the trail, a fox trotting along the ridge-line against the sunset, licking the flame-shaped maroon, velvet flowers of the staghorn sumac blooms, soft thick carpets of pine needles, moose poop looking like candy, will-o’-the-wisp alighting in the same tree twice, bright as the moon, creosote perfume, rare thimble berries that taste like no other, the thrilling miracle of swimming snakes, seeing some flowers out the window of the car in fast motion on the highway -- flowers of a species that don’t grow here, meaning there was maybe a house there less than 100 years ago and now they are some old settler's flowers that grow out of the grave of that house. What happened there? Making eye contact with a housecat 50 feet away as we marvel at the bobcat strolling by between us, our eyes popping out of our heads. Rabbit prints swelling in the snow to the size of Siberian tiger paws, the biggest bird I’ve ever seen swooping down before me, the size of a fourth grader, completely without sound. Wondering if some leaves are related to leopards? Seeing monarch butterflies mating in the air like they were dangling from kinked wire in a janky puppet show, how are they flying like that? How are they so strong? Exploding jewelweed seed pods against my bare arms, not believing their orchid-like flowers are possible this far north. And most hypnotic of all sensations; being enveloped in a swarm: copper skippers, gnats, flying ants, stinging nettles, mushrooms, mosquitoes, wasps, and night pollinating sphinx moths in the heavy hanging blossoms of a lilac bush that’s now gone. It used to sigh it’s perfume through the kitchen window and still remember how I would freeze and notice with all my might before the smell dissipated.