I’m saving myself in a covered dish beside the bed. every night I slough and gather. I’ve done this for more than a year and at last detect drifts of me forming. I begin to have topography, emergent, unmapped. I can’t quite make out the bedouins who cross my expanse, pitching tents by lash-ringed oases, but I blink and their tents fly under the gale. camels moan. I am host and whimsical. when I roll over, entire villages go extinct. there is a price for my imnipotence: my dreams are haunted by what writhes underground. it moves and hillsides shudder, and I know it wants out, the several of it– out, up, away from me. the waiting disturbs my rest. but every next night, once again, I slough and gather.