Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff Vandermeer

A dead robin in the gutter, one torn wing spread toward the drain like an invitation to the underworld.

The face that stares back at you from the mirror later in life is so different than when you’re young. There’s a winnowing away and a shutting down. A sense of something having been taken from you and you don’t know exactly what it is, just that it isn’t there anymore. What opens up to you instead is experience, is cunning, is foreknowledge. Nothing you sought.

“Those of us who are different know the world better, know it how it truly is. We can’t edit out parts of it. The horror and the beauty most ignore. When your senses are acute, you can’t escape. And you see the disconnect we have from … everything.”

rusting through their silver paint like something ancient becoming visible.

We were a legion of fools in masks. A rhapsody of masks. A rhapsody of fools.

Maybe you’re used to damage. Maybe the damage is what lures you in.

Weak men know they’re poor in virtue and take their self-knowledge as evidence others will plot against them. So they want to be the only ones who know things.

We have built so many toxic constructs, we cannot see through the latticework. We have built so many mirrors, there are no windows to shatter.

Delusional. Naïve. Unworkable. Dangerous. That is what the enemy called the necessities for survival. For flourishing.