Half the body is experience, if I’m to believe in emotional verisimilitude. Half the body is rent by experience like a healing scab is that corny I don’t care I guess whatever.

I care. That’s the other half. I care so much I could fall apart every time my son cries for my specific attention. Today he needs me to kiss the toe he stubbed. He needs me to hold a pink facsimile of experiences—strawberries on a dish towel and acorns in his bed sheets collected after I tell him one more time like I will tell him every time he asks me for it, about the volcano he is saving us from.

You are the conductor of a train and all of the children and all of the people in this village are going to take that train to sleep, and we can see the volcano from a safe distance. We are so excited to see the lava slowly come out of the erupting mountain.

The two halves of my body co-exist because they believe in the strength of their respective stories. One, of the beautiful volcano. The other, of the cold rock formations—encomiums also.