There is a smoking hole I keep under my belly whose smoke I inhale and blow out of my mouth. Using big, empty words, the formation of which resembles the way the caterpillar with the huka blows out the letters to spell: “Who. Are. You.” The least and most important question in Alice in Wonderland, or in life, really.

I am what I feed that smoking hole. I tuck away the things that are cutting and let them consume that gaping orifice between me and the world. A throughway, a tunnel.

Right now, I am hiding all the hideousness I see – they’re using dog robots to kill our humans as they tremble and fall on their walk from homelessness to hunger. I put away the melancholy that comes with being a person among people. I hide the needs and the wants that once sung and screamed, only to whimper and whisper from time to time, lately.

This acidic burning hole, it is so slight, but it will eat us whole one day; should I not suck in the smoke and blow it out on the cuts and scratches of others who need tending to.