I FELL ASLEEP ON A SAPLING

I fell asleep on a sapling

and awoke

much later

to find that it had grown right through me

To pull myself free would open me up,

pouring torrents of life onto the forest floor

To cut the sapling out of the ground

would be to sever something alive inside of me

to feel it die

and wither

inside of me

So I remain where I am,

craning my neck and twisting my head

to gaze upwards as the sapling

becomes a mighty tree

At first my friends

bring me tuna salad sandwiches to survive

but I soon learn to take nourishment

from the roots,

pulling up nutrients
from the rich soil

into my body

I swap out blood for chlorophyll

and a basement dweller's pale complexion

for a soft healthy green.

I glow.

Upon reaching the doorstep of heaven,

the tree looks down,

suddenly aware of itself,

horrified to discover it has a living human growing through it

and casually brushes it away

Cast off by the tree

splayed open

for all of the forest to see

my life begins to ebb away,

all colours draining

save for the red hot shame

but nothing is wasted in the forest

Before too long,

my open cavity becomes host

to thriving cities

My insides are once again teeming with life

a torrent of infrastructure

and insect bureaucracy

My temporal body soon to be replaced

by networks of honeycomb

paper nests and royal jelly

killing fields of spiderweb

yet always at the centre,

an ever-beating heart
blanketed with moss