Silt Sweet Sediment (2022)

I rise from the bed of the ocean - silt sweet sediment dripping from my skin

I wrap around the beams and struts, curling through corners and wriggling through right angles until I am bound by the space, one with it. Intrinsically a part of it. If I stay I will become it. 

Feelers move across the wood, unused to the solidity. The dance of the waves like muscle memory as they tickle my skin below. With each new landmark I am entangled, part of the thing I am unsure I want to become. 

In that becoming I slip in through cracks in the floor, open windows and doors, electric cables that hang and twist

I wind myself through machinery, hearing you cry and laugh without.

I cry and laugh within. 

I am confined yet I grip the surface, pulling myself tighter, deeper. Roots cling desperately to the ocean bed, that soft salty earth from which I have risen. They do not want to leave. I do not know how to stay. 

the glint of metal spins around me like the glitter of the sun against the surf, it clangs and drops from hands and slots, a continuous, vital exchange. 

I gobble it up, letting the smooth shine slip down my gullet and rest in my stomach, adding to the ecosystem I have tended, unknowing and in full knowledge. I laugh at the change, sending guttural chuckles out from my whiskered lips, clinking as I spin myself tighter within the web of power. 

I have never had, always wanted, a hoard. That shining perpetual feed, leaving you sated and smiling at the end of it all. In the quiet I unfurl and feel the wrap of cables and claustrophobia bind against my flesh, sinking between scales. I could not leave if I wanted to, but even as I thrash against the constriction… I do not want to. Facsimiles of life smile as they keep me company. I watch as my many tentacled children clamber forth and rise from the depths, crawling across my skin, seeking their own domains.