They smash their faces into trees with full force. You can see the freckles they leave behind all over the smooth gray trunks. You hear some of them somewhere nearby, relentlessly banging their heads against the sycamores.
Then you see one. It’s really there, really doing what you know woodpeckers do.
knock knock knock knock knock
It pulls back and cocks its head to check its progress.
And now you are not where you are now. In that pause, you no longer are you-shaped or now-shaped. You are in woodpecker. You cock the bird’s head to check its progress. Look at all the holes you made before you got here.
This is not the first time you have been outside your self.
You tend to avoid your own shape. You locate anywhere else, in anything else, anything you happen to look at. When you woke up this morning you were sweatpants-shaped then you were floor-shaped then doorknob-shaped, lawn-shaped curb-shaped. Looking up, you did some gray across the morning. You were sky, you were breeze.
This was not the first time you had been outside.
And now you are located woodpeckerward. Your location shimmers down its feathers.
Part of you pecks at woodpecker from inside, pecking at the inside of the place you are where you are not, trying to make a hole.
knock knock knock knock knock
With full force, that part of you bangs its head against the banging head. If that part of you can peck a hole, maybe through the woodpecker’s eye, maybe you can look back through the eye, look back at yourself, and maybe for once you can fit your location’s shape back onto your shape.
waiting, sweetheart. waiting.
a banger, no doubt.