The sun swims between the gaps in the oak leaves, green patterns at the bottom of a lake. the backyard lawn bleeds into the cracks in the cement patio, yellow dandelion fingers poking through the fabric. the girl’s sneakers knot and unknot under the chair as she twists the tuning pegs of the guitar and robins dive the garden and bees thrum for pollen. the upward hum of the string as it tightens, two strings beat together, tones clenching against one another, twist until the tension releases and the frequencies resolve, and robin beaks a worm.

worm swallows into the warm dark of the gizzard and begins to rearrange its body into discrete elements. it simplifies its anatomy in the juices of robin’s belly. worm is wider now, wetter and slow.

robin has flown a long way, into new trees and gardens, swallowed seeds that dissolve into worm, swelling robin's belly. then it is time and robin shits in the garden before flying off, leaving worm and seed to the dirt. it is good dirt, though dry in the late summer sun, and worm is now also seed and seed is also worm and they are dissolved, reduced to their base elements. they are birdshit, after all.

birdshit decides that since it is wet and the dirt is dry that it will sink into this dirt to explore.

birdshit finds that it now moves slow, slower even than worm, slower even than seed. a new world is revealed to birdshit, the world of slowtime, a world that had been invisible before. here in slowtime the dirt and stones move as rivers, shot through with lightning strikes of root systems, with beetles and ants. here the dirt makes its own movements, cycling energy and water and minerals up and down, and soon birdshit is drawn into this river, pulled along its ancient current until it does not know where birdshit ends and dirt begins.

dirt spreads itself wide and far all the way round and all the way down, and dirt is solid and whole and good. and through dirt and its slow river swim the beetles and ants and seeds and the seeds are fed and sprout into the world where the bees thrum the flower petals for pollen and the dirt is worm eating and shitting dirt and the dirt is seed and bird and shit and the girl is standing in the dirt toes clenching in the dirt as the tension rises in her body radiating up from her stomach and chest and cheeks, and when the tension releases, glittering seeds pat into the soil and the slow river carries it away.