He cut one lawn. And it was done. It was fresh. There was that smell in the air. He cut another. And it was good. He got a tip. There were no markings from the tires on the driveway. He cut ten lawns and he wasn’t even tired. He cut 40 lawns. In a day. And he set the company record. And he felt like the king of the world. He cut 400 lawns. And, hey, that was a couple of weeks in life. It’s how this gig works. Unemployment in the winter, he’d have time to do, well, figure out whatever he wanted to do with that part of the calendar. He cut 4,000 lawns and that was a year. What year was it? This one or the last? He cut 40,000 lawns and that was his life. His body was hurting. His bones were tangible things that spoke to him and felt individually. They didn’t get lost in the midst of his flesh. He cut 400,000 lawns and he was dead. In his next life he was the grass. He learned that the smell of fresh cut grass is actually a distress signal: the grass raising an alarm that an apocalypse was taking place. He tried to reason with the other grass. He said he knew what life was like on the other side. The people mowing their ranks were in fact under the influence of drugs, and the smell of freshly cut grass was appealing to their heightened sensibilities: they had no idea what grass was talking about when it smelled that way! He interviewed 4 million individual pieces of grass and they all told their story. What did it feel like to be grass? It didn’t matter that no one could live long enough to read the entire book. As long as everyone at least read part of the book, they’d have the general idea. He got the book translated by mites into the language of the squirrels, from squirrels to birds, from birds to dogs to humans. And then they finally understood. And the humans stopped killing grass. And let it grow and allowed its story to permeate their world. By the end of the day. He’d considered it lives well lived. Until hell froze over. And the sun did, too. And everything died anew.