The Chicken Sees Its Ancient Self in the FMNH PR 2081 Specimen in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

gratified by its formidable form,

it inflates itself into another infinity

Instructions on Unbecoming

When I decide it’s time, I go back into the sea. I don’t need to do anything. The brine does it all. Turns me into a teenager, a child, a baby. Strips me down to bone and sinew in the approximation of something living. Foams me into a fetus. The tide rolls backwards with me, bares the sand. I’m an ancient fish, unseen for centuries. I’m a creature that once dwelled in the lightless depths. I’m a single-cell organism, so small you’d easily miss me. The ocean swells and I swell with it, a pulsing membrane; primordial heart.