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– I’m down maybe five feet I take a moment to thank the leaf-filled rectangle of sky, and with the muslin settled over my mouth and nose I yank on the tarpaulin and the black mound falls Then I pull the tarp out from under the covering layer, scrunch it down my side, and delicious hunks and crumbles of dug earth say: welcome   I allow a last minute of earthly thought and congratulate myself on this ingenious arrangement The spot in the forest, far from anywhere The tarp and the spade The digging – a long hole, deep enough to work, deep enough to be right – and the piling of the soil on the tarp with a good strip hanging over the edge of the hole for easy tugging The hurried discard of clothes, my body a chilly worm Turns out it starts to get warm quite soon as you go down; a reminder you’re entering a living being   Here’s the idea, which you’ll agree is simple and elegant: stay here, breathing with care, and make a long, long count to five in the glorious black See what happens At some point my wish will come true and I’ll bud; a tendril will burst from me and wrap me into the world From my flat edges, roundness   After a while it will be time to push up and out into the mossy night Ejected from under the skin of the world, I’ll be real again, greener, humming with mitochondria A twig in the nest, a bee in the hive, a member of the family, a body in a body-shaped space –   No three toadstools/porn-fae yet that day, but from spin to spin I’d got a decent number of gnarled oaks coming up on paylines Even one five of a kind Only Qs, but those five Qs brought me even I’d had a celebratory drink at that point I’d had a celebratory jelly snake from the top desk drawer I noted rhythmic splashes coming from outside, so I bent and twisted to raise the blind for a little dose   From the