Native Nourishment

A black velvet flying carpet washes over us as we sleep

Foreigners stay up late into the night crackling acoustic sparks into the cavernous silence

Light spills into our eyes, surprising even the birds, causing them to clear their throats as if they were already awake

We both roll outward like a creaky old drawbridge making way for the passage of our telepathic geriatric squint to acknowledge we have mirrored feelings

After a few minutes of clumsily preparing nourishment like a pair of drunken blindfolded bears we slice through the heavy cloak of the natural night to regain control of our bodies

We coerce our frozen robot limbs to approach the trailhead

The vigorous exercise of scrunching our foreheads, tilting our chins up and pushing our retina to the top reaches of our eye sockets to analyze the ascent thaws our bones

We drop layers like a pair of excited teenagers until the cold nibbles

The heat of burning the previous day's fuel and the cool sharp mountain air blend our bodies with peaceful purpose as we feed our Ancestral Need.