Console the Host

The division, the tearing apart

Of the tendon from the bone, the child

From the family, the life as dreamed

From the life collapsed in retrospect,

The human from the brute animal,

They’re what your thoughts, your ravens, circle,

Those thoughts from which your mind then recoils.

Why must your hidden desires return

In loops of glia-backed synapses

To pain, to division, to that one

Particular, peeling, green-stick split—

Who is animal? Who is human?

You are all. We smoke off of your pain,

But more like fog rising from the pines

Than the remains of wood from a fire.

You gather us, and we leave you, but

We are not the revenants you think,

Ghosts loosed by the life that consumed you.

We are a necessary other

Kind of being, essential to you,

Composing you, not composed of you,

Although we carry the scent of you

To other lives and situations.

You are not split, gentle host, you hold

Your human and your animal both

Within you as our codes who name you.

You are explorer, and you are brute.