And when they ask, what kind of animal would you be, I always say gazelle or lark, never cockroach, even though they’ll outlast us all. Once I dreamed I had a body with two heads like those ancient figures from the Zarqa River – bitumen eyes, trunks of reed and hydrated lime, built thick and flat without genitals, nothing shameful to eject except tears. We all want to be monuments but can’t help shoving our fingers in dirt. Imagine a life in childhood – one face to the womb, another to the future. What we remember is the road, peering through a lattice at dusk, the trauma of burial. Will we have terracotta armies to take us through, will we be alone with the maggots? How good the rain is after a failed romance. Never mind the muddy bloomers. We are appalled by life and still, any chance we get we emerge from the earth like cicadas to sing and fuck for a moment of triumph. The shock we carry is that the world doesn’t need us. Even so, we go collecting parts – an afternoon by the sea, a game of hopping on and off scales, nose low to the ground, looking for that other glove to complete us Here I am globe, spinning planet. Tell me why are you not astonished?