I have been circling this carrion for more than a week, perhaps waiting for it to ‘ripen’ just a bit more. The view up here is breathtaking and yet I feel starved for air, slowly suffocating in this wind that supposedly keeps me aloft and aloof. 

Now, I have entered the slow helix of descent, taking my time but proud of myself for giving away altitude for the speed I will need to reawaken my senses and live again. 

The longer my meaty mistakes rot, the more they foul the air, the more excuse I have to avoid them, distantly considering them, but never really approaching. Now, I fall, deliberately and I begin to know the smell I have avoided. 

My pulse rises as my determination quickens. As I begin to consider the meal that awaits me, I am repulsed, just as I was as an eight-year-old boy when my mother replied to my query about dinner, “We are having salmon loaf, Tommy.” I can’t really remember the taste or even the smell of salmon loaf now, but I remember how the small bones crackled as I chewed. My circling descent brings me closer and closer to that memory. 

I imagine that real vultures land on the meat someone or something else grounded. They go beak deep and then hop back and forth as they begin to pick at exposed organs and sinew and one another. They are glad for the meal.

I, on the other hand, land hard and just stand there like the grown human boy that I still am. Next to my own kill, I roll up my sleeves and I begin to dig for the heart of the matter, remembering that the meal I seek is somewhere beneath the muck. 

my paths are many
relentless you pursue me …

now to slow my steps